Divergence
by supercode
Summary: A mysterious stranger with a closely guarded agenda changes the lives of the Connor clan in many unexpected ways. But the Connors still wonder: Whose side is this mystery man on, and can he be trusted? Main pairing is Jameron, but there are several other pairings present. Rated M because I am paranoid.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: I do not own Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles or the characters in any of the Terminator franchises. If I did, TSCC would still be on today. This story is only for my own entertainment, and for any readers who may find it amusing.**

**Author's note: This is my first TSCC fan fiction. That being the case, I encourage any who reads this story to leave a review so I can improve my craft as a writer, but I politely ask for you not to flame me. If you don't like what I have written, please give me a reason. If you do like it, tell me what about my story you like. However, keep in mind that I already wrote the first draft for this multi-chapter story over several months, so I am unlikely to change any major plot points. Also, this story is somewhat OC centric, but there is a lot of Jameron as well, as well as some other pairings. Now on to the story! I hope you enjoy it. Please review!**

The crackling and buzzing of electricity could be heard for several city blocks, but at this time of night, almost no one heard it, and fewer still were awake enough, and cared enough, to pay any attention on what had already been a stormy night in Los Angeles. In fact, only one individual noticed that the storm had passed this part of town over half an hour ago, and that the sound this particular electrical discharge made was much different from the ones that had been rolling thought this part of California…

The tall biker, whose black helmet concealed his crew cut, drove into the empty lot. His auditory sensors had picked up the sound of the unusual event, and had followed one of his many secondary mission objectives to check up on it. His target would not arrive in L.A. to be terminated for another 12 hours, more than enough time to assess whether or not enemies had been sent back to this time, as his master had not informed this infiltrator unit that it would be receiving any reinforcements. Therefore, it would be tactically sound to assume the occupant(s) of this temporal anomaly had been hostile….

The infiltration unit got off its bike and walked into the alleyway, noting the smoking crater and remnants of a particular kind of electrical discharge. After removing its helmet, it began a cursory scan of its surroundings to see if it could identify any targets, but it was never able to finish its scan.

The T-850 unit barely heard the sound of his attacker before the connection between his CPU and his "spinal column" was abruptly severed. The infiltrator's world went black, and it never saw its attacker's cold smile as he quickly uses a sharpened top of a tin can from the alleyway to carve off a flap of the infiltrator skin, pry open the port cover with his bare hands, and remove its CPU with almost a minute to spare before the infiltrator's secondary power cell would have kicked in.

'That was ALMOST too easy.' The attacker thought to himself. 'But then again, despite their physical durability, T-850's are less intelligent than the newer infiltrators.'

But there was no time to dwell on the inferior infiltration unit now; there was a mission to see to. Right now, he would need to find a way to dispose of the "body" quickly, and then he could continue on to his primary mission. The newcomer helped himself to the T-850's belongings, including his sunglasses, helmet, and clothes (which were slightly big for him), the key to its motorcycle, and the meager contents of its wallet, which barely contained $100, not that it even would have needed that much to complete its mission.

The T-850's attacker put the required items, including the T-850's chassis, broken CPU and several bits of flammable trash and refuse, in the middle of the still smoking crater before reaching inside the chassis, punching through the infiltrator's synthetic skin, and squeezing hard on the nuclear power cell before putting on the infiltrator's helmet and quickly climbing onto his new bike and riding away. The explosion was almost deafening to human ears, but the individual on the bike ignored it. Without looking back, he knew that several nearby buildings would be destroyed or on fire now, but that no persons lived close enough to be harmed by the blast or identify his part in its creation. There would be suspicions of some kind of arson after the fires were put out, but with nothing but an unidentifiable mess of molten slag and traces of common flammable materials left in the wake of the explosion, and no witnesses, investigators would be forced to write off the explosion as the result of an atmospheric discharge setting of an unknown flammable mixture in the alleyway. The explosion would hide the shape of the crater, and the trace amounts of radiation left over from the explosion would certainly fade away long before anyone actually thought to bring a Geiger counter into the investigation. It was possible that the Terminator would have allies that would make a connection between its destruction and his arrival, but the time traveler doubted it. Infiltrators generally worked alone. Besides, the new arrival to this time had his mission to worry about, and that took precedence over all other considerations. Time was short.

It was time to find the Connors.


	2. Chapter 1

**Author's note: I decided to post the first chapter at the same time as I posted the prologue, since the prologue is a little short, and I wanted to give my readers something to look at before I updated again! Again, hope you enjoy it, and please review!**

The vehicle turned into the driveway of the Baum household after yet another failed mission. Sarah Connor sighed. She had been researching yet another lead on the three dots while John and Cameron were at school. She knew this particular lead was a long shot, which was why she had set aside such little time to investigate this corporation, but it was still disconcerting to know that she was no closer to figuring out exactly what the mysterious shapes meant.

The Connor matriarch noticed that there was no other vehicle in the driveway, and cursed Derek Reese yet again, although she wasn't surprised. The man kept disappearing to who-knows-where these days, even when Sarah would explicitly tell him to stay put. She had been counting on him to guard the house, and more importantly, their supplies, while the "kids" were at school and she was chasing this lead, but the man had bolted yet again. Sarah silently noted that John's uncle was somewhat hypocritical whenever he would berate his nephew for not focusing on their mission to destroy Skynet. It didn't seem like his head was always in the game either.

Sarah got out of the vehicle and walked casually to the front door. She knew something was wrong as soon as she stepped though the doorway, but she couldn't put her finger on it. Quickly grabbing her shotgun out of its hiding place, Sarah entered the living room with caution, and immediately saw the intruder sitting on the sofa in front of the TV from the back. Before she could attempt to sneak up on him, however, the stranger spoke. "I know you're here, Miss Connor, there is no need for a game of hide and seek."

The 20-something looking man turned around and stood as Sarah leveled the gun at his head, but the tall, brown haired, green eyed stranger, clad in dark shades, jeans, a t-shirt, and a leather jacket that was clearly too big for him, was unfazed. "You can put that…", the unknown man pointed at the weapon, "away as well, its not loaded. I made sure of it." The man picked up the shotgun shell case, currently containing every shell in the Baum home, off the living room table, and Sarah cursed as her dry-firing of the shotgun confirmed his words. "Not that it would have made any difference, you understand...", The stranger took off his glasses and his eyes glowed red to illustrate his point, "but I do like my face, and it takes a long time to grow it back."

Sarah was fighting panic and the adrenaline in her system. She briefly considered trying to run away from the cyborg, or trying to get another weapon; but, judging from the gun in the stranger's hand, and his cybernetic reflexes, she knew she wouldn't make it 3 feet before he killed her. However, the good news was, she was still alive, so the infiltrator wanted something from her. She needed to find out what. "What do you want from me? If you want me to help you kill John, you're wasting your time. I would die first!"

The stranger than did something Sarah had never seen a Terminator do. He laughed. "Thank you! I haven't had an occasion to laugh in years! First off, I'm definitely not here to kill John, I was sent here by him. Second…"

Sarah cut him off, "How do I know you're not lying?!"

The stranger smirked. "He said you were stubborn and paranoid, but I had no idea…You want proof I was sent by John, not Skynet?"

Sarah nodded, noting that this infiltrator did not act like any she had ever encountered before. "Okay. I knew where you keep the emergency spare key under the plant next to the shed in the back yard…" He tossed it to Sarah, and she caught it. "I also knew the alarm code to the house, which is why the police never showed up here when I let myself in." Sarah was grateful for that, even if the cops had run the stranger off (unlikely), she would still have a lot of explaining to do if they found the automatic weapons she had hidden on the property. Also, Sarah admitted to herself that she had guarded that code well, not even Riley knew the new one. She had shown she couldn't be trusted to keep the house secure when she had forgotten to set the alarm last time. Now, Sarah made John set it whenever his girlfriend left late at night. "Also, I know John's school address…" The stranger rattled the street name and number off quickly, "And I know his class schedule. He was in gym three hours ago, meaning Cameron wasn't with him. If I had wanted to kill John, that would have been my best opportunity to do so, not coming here in the middle of the day." Sarah mentally went over John's schedule and realized the machine was right, and he would have killed John there if that was his mission.

Sarah immediately relaxed. "Okay, I believe you then. John must have really trusted you to give you that info. Why would he do that though? I mean, you're a machine!"

The stranger smiled once again. "That's not entirely accurate. The truth is…a little more complex, but I can assure you I am not a Terminator. My name is David." David put his gun on the table and offered his outstretched palm to Sarah, "and it is an honor to finally meet you!"

Sarah reluctantly took the strange man's hand and shook it. She still didn't know what to make of him, but he clearly wasn't hostile. The Connor matriarch then pulled away, and asked the question she had been dying to ask him for the past few minutes. "Why are you here? What's your mission?"

David's face suddenly resumed the stoic appearance it had taken on when Sarah had entered the room. "I'm afraid I can't tell you that, ma'am. Not until I speak to John. It's very important." Before Sarah could protest, David heard the sound of two sets of footsteps approaching the house, one distinctly heavier than the other. "It sounds like he's coming home with Cameron now. Meet them at the front door, will you? Tell Cameron not to try to kill me, or you won't ever know why I came here." Sarah reluctantly nodded, but gave David a look that said the conversation wasn't over yet as she walked to the front door. Several minutes after John and Cameron entered the house, they walked into the living room with Sarah, looking suspiciously at the stranger from the future who was standing patiently in the middle of the room. Cameron looked like she was ready to kill him at the drop of a hat, not that this surprised anyone.

John turned to David and spoke first. "Who are you, really?"

The stranger smiled again as he turned toward John,. "Like I told your mother, my name is David. David Connor, to be more precise."

Sarah barely held back a gasp, and David noted that John and Cameron's eyes widened a little bit as he spoke again, "It's good to see you again, dad."

**Before any of you comment on it, I know there have been several "Connor offspring from the future" stories on this site, but I was hoping to do something a little different in this story than I have seen done in any of the stories I have already seen posted on this site. If I didn't have an original story to tell, I wouldn't bother posting anything, so I hope you will bear with me a little longer to find out what I have in store for you, reader. Still, any input you all could give would be helpful.**


	3. Chapter 2

Cameron's hand clenched and opened repeatedly. A diagnostic did not reveal a reason, as it hadn't so many times before. "Do you want to run that by us again?" John finally spoke after several seconds.

Even now, with John so young, David could tell that his fath…no, John, meant business, and he was ordering him to answer, not asking. But this John wasn't really the man David had known as his father, not yet, and he didn't take orders from him. Therefore, David simply turned to Cameron and silently asked her to confirm his previous statement. "Cameron?"

John's cyborg protector carefully looked at the new arrival for several seconds as the others in the room waited with bated breath, and then nodded. "A scan of the subject's facial features and visible anatomy reveal that he has several physical commonalities with Kyle and Derek Reese, as well as John and Sarah Connor." David managed to suppress a shudder at the thought of Cameron examining his body that closely, and allowed her to continue her statement. "Also, although his breathing indicates that he is part human, my scans also reveal that he does not have a heartbeat, or emit the same amount of body heat as humans. I do not know how it would have been possible, but he may have been born human, than been given machine parts by an unknown party to replace some of his organic matter for reasons I cannot determine at this time. This is all conjecture. However, there is a high probability he is your son."

Once again, all eyes were on David, but John continued to speak to Cameron. "Are you sure?"

Cameron hesitated, and then nodded. "I would require a blood sample from David to be certain, but given his familial resemblance, the intel he possesses about us, and the fact that I see no signs of deception in my audio or visual scans of his person, there is a 97% probability he is who he says he is. There is a nearly 100% certainty that he is a blood relative to you. "

"But you didn't know of him before now?" Sarah questioned Cameron incredulously.

Tired of being spoken about in the third person, a stoic looking David interrupted. "That's because I was born after Cameron was sent back in her time line. I don't have time to sit here and explain how time travel works; ask Cameron some time, if you really want to know. But I'm here, now. And now that introductions are done, my first mission priority is that I need to talk to John. Alone. Now."

"I'm not sure that would be a tactically sound course of action, John." Cameron noted.

"Of course it's not 'tactically sound' and it's not going to happen!" Sarah shouted with more than her usual intensity. She was, quite frankly, a little shocked at the current state of events, and it was starting to show from the strained look on her face and the rapidly increasing volume of her voice. It wasn't every day you found out you had a grandson that was somehow a cyborg.

David, on the other hand, was calm. "You can go ahead and take a blood sample, Cameron, and confirm what you already know, but we don't have time to wait around for the results. It is imperative that I speak to John immediately."

Cameron quickly went to get the syringe from the first aid kit, but John stopped her with a motion of his hand. "That's okay, Cameron. I believe him, and I'll go with him. I mean he is my…son," John hesitated after making that statement, as that was the part of this whole business that was freaking him out the most, "…and he could have easily killed me earlier if he had wanted to."

David nodded, "Where?"

John hesitated only a moment before replying. "My room should be fine for talking, we'll go there." Despite Sarah's protests, John quickly went up to his room and David followed close behind him until they reached it. Cameron, of course, tried to follow, but John blocked her from entering. "You heard what the man said, stay out of this!"

"He is not a man, at least not anymore, and he might not be safe." Cameron deadpanned while staring right at David.

David didn't bother to reply to that statement, but John did. "Whatever he or it is, we are talking alone. Now, I order you to leave us alone, and so does your precious 'future John', so go away, and don't listen in on our conversation!"

Cameron reluctantly backed away while giving David a death glare that was as cold as steel before speaking. "Five minutes." Then Cameron quickly walked downstairs, her heavy footfalls making every step creak.

David looked at John curiously. "You didn't have to talk to her like that, you know. She might be easier to deal with if you were a little more civil towards her."

John shrugged. "Whatever. It is only a machine and it doesn't have feelings or require civility!" Johns spat out the recycled line from Derek Reese's mouth, but he knew that it was a lie. A lie he kept telling himself because the alternatives were dangerous.

David shrugged. "If you say so, John. I hope you don't mind I call you John, since you aren't technically my father yet…"

"No, John is great. Being called 'dad' by you when I'm only 16 is too weird."

David nodded. "Fine. Anyway, I wanted to talk alone because we need to talk about Riley. You need to stop seeing her immediately. Your relationship with her is going to get her killed."

John groaned. "Not you too! Everyone keeps saying that, but I think I can handle…"

David was not amused and cut John off. "John, I'm from the future, and I have talked to future you more times than I can count. So understand this: your relationship with Riley WILL get her killed if you don't end it now, and end it right." THAT shut John up, and David continued. "Riley, as you already suspect, is from the future, and is being manipulated by someone else from that time. What you don't know is that this person is named Jesse Flores, a traitor to the Resistance who used to be an officer before she was court-marshaled for disobeying orders. She no longer trusted your judgment since you were relying more and more on reprogrammed machines; because you knew that they can perform many tasks better than any human. Therefore, she recruited Riley from the future, got access to the TDE, and brought her back in order to, among other things, seduce you in order to get you away from Cameron and get you to distrust machines in this time. From the way you were just talking to Cameron, I would say her plan almost worked."

John put his eyes toward the ground and put his head in his hands. He was quiet for several seconds, processing the information David had just given him, and struggling with his youthful pride before he would finally admit to himself that David's story fit with everything that he had seen Riley say or do to a "T". Given David's apparent source of Intel in the future, John himself, the newcomer's story was convincing, and it seemed to make too much sense not to be true! John felt truly stupid for having let Riley play him like a fiddle and widening the gulf between Cameron and himself that, deep down, he had never wanted to be there in the first place. "Damn it! That makes total sense! Cameron was right not to trust Riley! I've been so stupid!" John hesitated a few more seconds, and then added, "I guess I may owe Cameron an apology. What do we need to do to correct the situation?"

David let slip a thin smile. "For one thing, we don't tell Sarah that Riley entered into an alliance with Jesse willingly, or she will kill Riley herself, which would be a waste. Riley has skills the Resistance in this time can make use of if I fail my mission; she's a pretty decent spy and thief, for example. But there are a few more things that need to be done right now…"

Over the next several minutes, David explained some of his plan to John, who listened in patient silence. Finally, after David was finished talking, John couldn't stop himself from asking his time traveling "son" a question, "What am I like, in the time you come from? No one from the future seems to be willing to give me a straight answer to that question."

David's face turned solemn for a second, and then resumed its stone-like countenance. "For many years, you were one of the most brilliant tactical leaders this world has ever known. And despite their misgivings about using reprogrammed machines, your men trusted and admired you, for the most part. You were also the best father anyone could expect, given your circumstances and responsibilities. "

David was being evasive in his answers, and John caught on to this fact almost immediately. "Why are you speaking in past tense about future me? What changed?"

David's face remained as impassive as stone. "You died."

CRACK! The door knob to the outside of John's room broke off and Cameron barged into the room. David had been aware she had returned to the hallway and begun eavesdropping several minutes ago, which he had allowed since the confidential part of the conversation had already ended. He suspected the doorknob had broken off in Cameron's hand once her hand "glitch" had kicked in again. John jumped off his bed in surprise. He obviously had not known Cameron had been there. "Cameron! What are you doing, you were supposed to stay downstairs with Sarah!"

"Your five minutes were up.", Cameron stated simply.

To his credit, John quickly regained his composure when he remembered the conversation he had just had with David. "You know what? Forget it. It turns out I owe you an apology anyway…"

"Later John…" Cameron cut him off, but David noted that her facial features seemed to soften almost imperceptively before she turned back to him, and John finally noticed that Cameron's hand was clenching even more erratically than it had in the past. "How does John die!? Tell me now! We need to stop it!" Cameron was actually shouting now, and John noticed he had not seen her show this much emotion since her chip had been damaged.

David suppressed a sigh. "I'm sorry, we can't stop it. Future John was just old and it was his time. No offense Cameron, but I doubt even you can protect him from time. 'Everything has its time, and everything ends.' That's what future John said before he died. That's what he told me to tell you." Somehow, this seemed to make Cameron even more upset, and she stormed out of the room and down the stairs, hand clenched the whole way.

John was clearly freaked out now, but he had one last question. "If I'm dead in the future, how did I send you back?"

David nodded. "Caught that, did you? You helped put together the mission with rest of the Council of Twelve and me, but you died before I could actually be sent back through time."

John frowned. "What council? I thought I was the only one in charge of the Human Resistance?"

David shrugged. "You were, but in the time I came from, there was no more need for a resistance because the war was over. We'd won."John couldn't help but catch the bitter tone of David's voice as he delivered that last line, and he wondered why David was sent back if Skynet had already been defeated. However, before John could ask any more questions, David ended the conversation. "We better go downstairs. You need to calm Cameron and Sarah down…" , David doubted Sarah would have liked to be called "grandma", "and then we need to start the next phase of the plan. If we are lucky, there will be time for me to answer more of your questions later."

"And if we aren't lucky?" John asked with his arms crossed over his chest.

David looked right at John and replied to his father's query in the same tone as most people would reply to a painfully obvious question like "What is 2 plus 2?" "Then I will be dead very soon."

**I got a much bigger response for the first 2 posts of my story than I thought I would, so thank you to everyone who followed or choose to favorite the beginning of my story! I would also like to thank everyone who has sent a review, giving me input on what little I have posted so far, including **justjoe, NitrousX, scaryrobots, olischulu, LethalAI, and RufusloveCameron**. I found the input from** olischulu **about the prologue especially helpful, and have had it proofread and edited since, so hopefully it will be better now. Even so, I plan to edit it further based upon input I received from a PM. However, just so all my readers know, I meant for Sarah, Cameron and John to talk about, and possibly argue over, what to do about David for several minutes before all three of them confronted him in the living room. I just thought how the characters would act in that situation. Everyone on this site is welcome to respectfully disagree with me on these or other points about my story or the characters within, this story is just my idea of how these characters would react in these circumstances. As long as people do not say something along the lines of: "This story sucks!"without giving a reason they think so, I will consider such comments constructive criticism, not flaming. I have said enough for now; I will have another note below this one to explain the timeline of the story, if anyone is interested in such things. If not, the story itself should be easily comprehensible without that knowledge. Also, I know this note is way too long, but I wanted to write these thoughts for my readers down before I lose internet access for a while, which will happen shortly. Enjoy the chapter and please continue to give your input!**

**An explanation of the timeline for this story, as promised. This fan fiction is AU, and it is not. What I mean by that is that the timeline that most of this story takes place in is a timeline twice removed from the one we see at the very end of "Born to Run" in the series. In the timeline after that, teenage John returned to his "present"(circa 2007) after retrieving Cameron's chip from the "Born to Run" future, and reinserted her chip into her damaged chassis, which John was later able to repair. This is the timeline David comes from, which you will be learning more about later. David later traveled back in time for as yet unknown reasons some time after The Human Resistance and Third Faction had defeated Skynet in his timeline. David traveled to a point in time somewhere between the episodes "Complications" and "Ourselves Alone". However, due to the presence of David, and other time travelers from his timeline, some events in this third timeline have been altered in unexpected ways. For example, Cameron has knowledge of John's parentage, and had admitted as much when Derek got wounded by Vick, and John and Cameron still attend a public high school at this point in time, instead of having both "children" homeschooled after some point in season 2. Although none of this knowledge is strictly necessary to enjoy the story, I felt some fans of TSCC may want to know why some events and people are different than what they remember from the show. Furthermore, I thought it might be helpful to explain why the characters in the story will not know about events from the "Born to Run" timeline, or any of the previous timelines that were shown in the TV series, except when they have been informed of those events by a character in a previous timeline, as David was informed by "his" John Connor about Jesse and Riley's treachery. My aim, however, is to make sure that a person reading this story can understand it based on the info I give them about the timeline we see in this chapter, and David's timeline, which will be the only two timelines this story will cover. The theory of time travel that we are running with for this story is the multi verse theory of time travel.**


	4. Chapter 3

"So, you're my grandson, who is a cyborg, and John sent you back through time to fulfill some secret mission you can't even tell us much about?! And I'm just supposed to trust you on all this?!"

"Yes." David replied simply to Sarah, who was driving her vehicle toward Jesse's apartment, as David had instructed. He had, of course, told Sarah about Riley, Jesse, and Derek, but had a left out a few key details, like the fact that Riley had consented to the mission to seduce John of her own free will. David rolled down the passenger side window next to his seat and put his hand out the window to feel the wind while looking all around. Sarah couldn't tell if her grandson was gazing at all of the sites of L.A. in this time or scanning for potential threats. In truth, it was a little of both, and David's artificial senses were nearly overwhelmed by the data they were receiving from the wind, people and sights of the large California city. "Besides, it's not like I can't tell you my mission, we just don't have time for that right now, and the time isn't right for your John to know certain things yet, but it will be soon."

"You could tell me." Sarah replied, understanding that sometimes it was necessary to keep things from John to keep him from being overburdened. David shook his head. "You might tell him. And besides, you won't like what I have to tell you. Hang a left here and keep going straight. We'll be there soon."

Sarah complied with a grimace as she turned the vehicle to the left. David was doing little to reassure her of his intentions at the moment. The woman huffed softly. "I still don't like leaving John alone with Cameron when she's glitching like this, even if her hand isn't clenching right now. She might kill Riley in this state."

"She won't." David replied firmly. "That would alienate John from her, and then she couldn't protect him. Cameron wouldn't risk that. Besides, John needs to stay to break up with Riley and distract her while we do this, and we both know Cameron won't leave John all by himself at a time like this, when she knows people close to John are actively plotting against him."

Sarah sighed, she hated that David kept being right, but his logic was sound, and the Connor matriarch said as much. "I guess you are right. But that doesn't mean I have to like it!" David just shrugged.

Sarah drove for the next 15 minutes in silence through the inner-city traffic as David continued to survey his surroundings. Trying to reach out to her "grandson" in a different fashion, Sarah tried to engage him in small talk. "Things must pretty different in L.A. in the future." "Yes." "How does this era compare?"

David smiled. "This is much better. There's easier access to indoor plumbing, for one thing. I hope you don't mind, but I took a shower in your house before I know you would get home. I haven't had one in a few days, and I didn't want to stink when I met you for the first time."

Sarah nodded. David had just confirmed her fear that she was not alive in the future, and she appeared to still be destined to die from cancer."That's ok. Glad you like it so much now, I guess. Do you have any questions about this time?"

David barely blinked at the question. "Not really, everything I need to know was in my mission file."

Sarah frowned; getting this guy to open up was frustratingly difficult. "Is there anything you don't like about this time then?" "Yes." "What is that?"

David looked right at Sarah before replying. "People talk too much when they should be focused on other things." Before Sarah could fire back at her grandson for his rude remark, he told her to take a right into a parking garage adjacent to the apartment complex. David had told Sarah that some of the rooms in this apparently pristine apartment complex were used for all kinds of criminal activity, such as prostitution and drug trading, a fact which all of the residents of the complex tried to keep to themselves by keeping a low profile. In other words, it was a good place for someone who didn't want to be found by authorities to have a hideout. Sarah also noted that Jesse's place was close to the diamond fence she and Cameron had dealt with before. As soon as they pulled into a parking space, David pointed at Jesse's room from the car. "That one." he said simply before climbing out of the vehicle.

Sarah sighed again before following him. This was a rough day, and it was just getting started. "Let's get this over with then."

Meanwhile, back at the Baum residence…

Riley knocked on the door before yelling the password. John opened the door in front of a scowling Cameron, who looked even scarier to the teen than usual. Failing to suppress an involuntary gulp, Riley let herself in like she usually did, but this time with her traveling bag. After John failed to give her his customary greeting, Riley spoke. "So what's the big emergency?! Who's after you that could track us by cell phone that has you so scared that you begged me not to bring mine, where are we going, and why aren't you talking to me, John?"

Cameron spoke before John could reply while her hand clenched again. "We know you're from the future Riley, and that Jesse sent you to seduce John and cloud his judgment. To get him away from me." With all the willpower Riley possessed, she was barely able to suppress a shudder at the icy tone of Cameron's voice, so much different than the cyborg's usually monotone inflection. For the first time since Riley had seen her, Cameron actually seemed angry.

Riley shook her head. "What are you talking about?!" She turned to John. "John this is crazy…"

"Save it!" John yelled at his soon to be ex-girlfriend. "We KNOW all about it, Riley. I've suspected since the day I meet you, but now I know you are a traitor from the future!"

Finally, knowing that John must have found her out, and would could not be convinced by a lie anymore, Riley gave up the facade and pointed to Cameron. "She's the traitor John! Her and all of the others you reprogram in the future. They make you make stupid choices and cloud your mind."

Cameron took a step forward with murder in her eyes, but John stopped her with his arm, and Cameron let him, leaving John to wonder just what had gotten into his protector lately. However, he still trusted her a lot more than Riley at this point. "On the contrary, I haven't been thinking this clearly in a long time, thanks to you and Jesse's meddling. But Cameron saved me from my own stupid mistakes until my informant could snap some sense into me and tell me about you and Jesse." John passed Riley a plastic bag. "This is your new I.D., your ticket for a Greyhound bus leaving at 7PM that you WILL be on, and some money for food on the way to Baltimore…" Riley tried to interrupt, but John kept talking. "The fake I.D. isn't very good, since Cameron made it under such short notice, but it will get you on and off the busses you will take on your way there without alerting Child Services or any law enforcement agencies. There is a map in there that will help you locate the Resistance safe house in that city, and a handwritten note with my signature vouching for your new position in the Resistance. If you try to go AWOL from them or if you refuse to meet up with the Resistance fighters in Baltimore…"

"You will be terminated." Cameron finished for John with what appeared to be just a hint of smugness in her voice, although both humans were sure they were imagining it.

"Do you understand everything I have just told you?" John asked Riley, who nodded and gulped again.

The human girl nodded slowly. "Yes. But what are your future soldiers doing all the way in Baltimore?" John didn't reply, since he didn't know. John had only been told that Riley would be given a low risk assignment that would prepare her to be a soldier in the Resistance, in case J-day could not be prevented. John hadn't even known about the safe house in that city until David had told him about it. After checking her bag and her person (although John did not find the tactile contact with the girl pleasing, as he would have before) to make sure Riley truly did not have a cell phone or electronic bug with her, John opened the front door and gestured for his ex to leave the premises, with a barely concealed look of anger and betrayal on his face. The implication was clear, she had better start walking to the station now if she wanted to make her bus.

Riley sighed deeply, but knew not to push her luck. Considering what John had found out about her, she considered herself lucky that neither John nor Cameron had terminated her. "I can see I can't change your mind then." John nodded as Riley continued speaking. "Goodbye then, John. I really did like you, and I'm sorry it had to end like this."

John had a stoic look on his face when he faced Riley, but his eyes were full of sadness and pain. "Same here."

Riley put the plastic bag in her travel bag and began to walk through the front door with it before turning to John for one last question. "What is going to happen to Jesse?"

John shrugged. "I'm not sure exactly, but she was a soldier who went AWOL and betrayed me, and now we know exactly where she is. This isn't a good day to be her."

Back at the apartment…

Jesse laughed as Derek whispered another one of his indecent jokes into her ear as they lay naked under the sheets after another bout of lovemaking. Although the moniker was an ironic joke, "funny Derek" could actually be hilarious sometimes. "That's…the…best…one you've told in a long time!" Jesse spoke in between giggles.

"I do aim to please." Derek replied with a smirk.

"Well in that case…" Jesse purred, "Why don't we go for another round, then?" Jesse wrapped her arms around Derek's torso and began to pull his face towards her for a kiss…

CRACK! The lock on the door to Jesse's apartment was broken by a well placed kick from a dark haired individual who was barreling into the room, followed by Sarah Connor. Both Jesse and Derek went for their side arms by the bed, but they were far too slow, as the intruder put a single bullet into Jesse's head with a silenced handgun, quietly rendering her lifeless in a split-second, and crossed the room quickly to grab Derek's hand before he could fire his gun. The man squeezed on Derek's hand until the soldier yowled in pain and dropped the weapon. Sarah gave the intruder (who let go of Derek's hand and walked to a corner of the room, avoiding eye contact with John's uncle) a disapproving look, but then quickly directed her glare, and her gun, toward Derek. "Our friend here from the future dropped by our house today. He told us about Jesse, and what she's been trying to do to John. He also told us that you knew about some of that, and still kept it all a secret from us. So my question for you is: Why shouldn't I just kill you now?"

"What are you talking about, Sarah?! Who is this guy?" Derek directed a gesture toward the dark haired man in the room who seemed strangely familiar to the future soldier; the individual who was currently standing as still as a statue and just HAD to be a Terminator, or so Derek thought.

Sarah wasn't deterred. "Don't try to change the subject, Reese. His name is David and we have it on good authority that he can be trusted, which is more than I can say for you at the moment. So, why should I let you live?!"

Derek sighed. "Because I thought Jesse was right! I thought helping her get John away from Cameron would make his judgment better in the future and help make the war less horrific. I thought we were helping John!"

Sarah lowered her gun, but did not holster it. "So, you thought it was okay for your girlfriend to make a teenage girl seduce John and risk getting said girl killed by Cameron or another machine?!" Derek looked down and cried a little, but Sarah couldn't tell if it was out of shame for what he had helped Jessie accomplish, or because he had just realized the kind of person he had taken into bed, and the depths Jessie would sink to exact vengeance on all machines. The bewildered look on Derek's face indicated it was the latter. In any case, the Connor matriarch had no sympathy for Derek, and would have still killed him, good intentions or not, if he was not Kyle's brother. As things were, however… Sarah gestured toward Jesse's body. "Get rid of it! And put some clothes on!"

Derek's mouth hung open in disbelief. "How am I supposed to carry Jesse anywhere with a busted hand, much less bury her?"

David finally spoke from his corner of the room. "I only broke one of the bones in your hand, Derek Reese, and you should be able to carry her over your shoulder just fine. And I suggest you hurry. I doubt anyone in this complex will report seeing anything to the cops. It would draw too much attention to the things that go on in this place. Still, there are the nearby buildings' tenants to consider, people might have heard me force my way into this apartment and the cops may be here before too long. " Derek scowled at David, but nodded his head in assent and began to wrap up Jesse's body in bed sheets after he put some clothes on while Sarah and David left the scene.

Once they reached the Connor vehicle, Sarah grabbed David by the arm, and the cyborg was smart enough not to pull away. "What was that?! I wanted to interrogate Jesse! I didn't tell you to kill her, much less break any of Derek's bones! " David slowly withdrew his arm from his grandmother's and spoke to her while maintaining eye contact with the Connor matriarch. "Jesse did not have any information I didn't already know. Unlike Riley, who was a lowly rat catcher in the future that was manipulated into being a pawn for a psychopath, Jesse was one of John's own soldiers who went AWOL and betrayed him. John ORDERED me to kill her."

"Another Future John or my John?" Sarah asked while rubbing her forehead. Thinking about time travel and all the possible future Johns made here head hurt sometimes. David looked Sarah in the eyes before replying and getting into the vehicle, "MY John." Sarah nodded and got in the vehicle, started the engine, and began to drive out of the parking lot.

Several seconds later, as if it was just an afterthought, David added, "And as for Derek, he got off lucky. My great-uncle helped Jesse betray not only your John, but every possible future John I know of. If he wasn't blood to me and John, and if I didn't think his intentions were good, he wouldn't still be breathing right now. In fact, I would have taken both his and Jesse's bodies and personally burned them in thermite." Sarah gulped. Although she was glad David was apparently on her side, she was beginning to wonder if keeping him around was a good idea. John already had enough darkness in his life, and this man with her blood flowing through his veins threatened to bring much more of it into her son's /David's father's existence. She knew David's mission must be important, but she still wondered: 'if I let David stay with us, will John become just like him?'

**My internet is back! **

**First of all, I would like to thank everyone who has reviewed my story so far, including **justjoe, NitrousX, scaryrobots, olischulu, LethalAI, RufusloveCameron, morded , blasteddead , ilovecyborgs , elicit, and JasonVUK. **I would also like to thank everyone who has chosen to follow or favorite my story. I am glad that so many of you are finding my story entertaining so far! I have just a couple of notes concerning this chapter. One, I know silencers don't completely muffle the sound of a gunshot in real life, but they do in the show, so I thought the same rule should apply in this story. Also, for those of you who may be thinking this chapter is a little dark and are wondering when this fic will get to the Jameron part of the story, don't worry. That part of the story will start in a few chapters and will run throughout the rest of Divergence, so there will be quite a bit of Jameron for fans to look forward to. However, there will be a lot of other things going on in this story that I think my readers will find interesting. As always, don't be afraid to post a review to let me know how I am doing, and how I can improve my writing. **


	5. Chapter 4

Sarah and David arrived back at the Baum residence a mere 30 minutes after leaving the apartment complex, after the cyborg had disposed of his gun in a dumpster several blocks away. The way David figured it, though, even if the gun he stole from the T-850 were found, it would never be traced back to him, since his fingerprints would not be in any records for another few decades. Between that fact, and Derek's disposal of the body, he hoped that Jesse's murder would never be traced back to him or the Connors. However, orders were orders, and Jesse had needed to die as quickly as possible before she could do any more damage. Besides, if David completed his mission successfully, it would cease to matter.

When they arrived at the Connor safe house, It did not escape the attention of Sarah Connor or her grandson that John looked really freaked out, and that Cameron was staring blankly into space , standing completely still in the middle of the living room. Sarah was, understandably, not happy about this. "What the hell happened, John?!"

John shrugged, and hesitated for a moment before replying. "I don't know! I was telling Riley we knew everything, and that she had to leave, then Cameron started the hand clenching again and acted like she wanted to kill her! She almost seemed…" John wanted to use the word angry, but neither he nor Sarah wanted to acknowledge the possibility of Cameron being able to feel anything, so he just waved his hand vaguely in the air. "Anyway, I stopped Cameron, and Riley left. But then Cameron said something about a data overload and that she had to go into standby for a few minutes."

This news did not improve Sarah's mood in the slightest."This is what I've been trying to tell you, John. Cameron's gotten less and less reliable since her chip has been damaged! We can't trust it anymore. I mean, what if someone had tried to attack you while it was in standby and we were gone, did it ever stop to compute the probabilities of that happening!?"

John shook his head emphatically. "I'm not sure she had a choice, mom! I think it was either going to be a temporary shut down or full-blown system meltdown! I just don't know what kind of glitch this is, or what's wrong with her…"

"There is nothing wrong with Cameron, John." David interrupted in a calm voice. "Although I'm sure Skynet would disagree."

Both Sarah and John turned toward their momentarily forgotten relative with confused looks on their faces. John was the first to respond. "What do you mean, nothing's wrong with her?! She's still as a statue! How could that possibly happen if she's ok!?"

David sighed "I didn't say she was okay. I just said there was nothing wrong with her. See, she's coming to now."

John turned back to Cameron, who started to blink, and then quickly turned her head right, then left, before settling her eyes on John once again before speaking in her usual monotone voice. "I'm sorry John, but I need to think. I believe I need…some alone time. I will be in my room. Please do not disturb me unless there is an emergency." Then, without looking at any of the other occupants of the room, Cameron quickly walked back upstairs and into her living space, where she slammed the door, but not hard enough to break it.

Sarah and John one again looked at David with confusion. "Would you mind telling us what's going on with Tin Miss, please!?" Sarah was clearly growing impatient with her cryptic grandson.

David simply shrugged. "No need. Cameron will tell John what's going on herself, when she's ready. Although, he may figure it out before she does. I'm guessing he already suspects the truth."

John shook his head nervously. "I don't know what you are talking about. I have no idea what's going on with her!"

David smirked. "Whatever you say, John. If you don't want to admit to yourself what you know just yet, I can't make you."

Sarah was observing the exchange between her son and grandson with great interest and trepidation, and it was making John nervous, so the boy changed the subject. "What happened with Derek and Jesse? Are they still alive?"

Sarah nodded slowly, "Derek is alive, although David here went completely overboard and broke one of your uncle's bones…" John glared at David with obvious disapproval, but the cyborg pretended not to notice. "Jesse, on the other hand…"

"The traitor is dead. Future you told me to do it, so I don't need anyone second guessing that decision, understood?" David interjected.

John nodded, "I understand. You don't need to be defensive about it. So, where is Derek, now?"

The cyborg shrugged again. "Burying the body I suppose. He should be here soon. After all, he doesn't have anyone else to go to anymore." David looked at his "father" and "grandmother". "Now, it's been a long day for all of us, and I have another one planned in the morning, so I suggest you both get some sleep. I'll explain myself to Derek when he gets home, and Cameron should be able to vouch for me again in the morning. Since she's not…in top working condition at the moment, I will guard the property tonight."

The Connor matriarch started to speak. Although Sarah knew it was indeed, a good time for her and John to go to bed, she had two important questions she needed to ask first. " "Do you know all the…" David interrupted Sarah. "I know all the exits, where all the weapons are, and I will alert all of you if there is a security threat. Future John made me memorize all of that like the back of my hand before he even started putting my mission together."

Sarah huffed; she did not appreciate her smart-aleck grandson interrupting her, even if he did know what he was doing. Nor had she forgotten that David had not answered her question about Cameron. However, since David did not seem responsive to her attempts to get information from him, she did not ask her grandson that question again. Instead, she simply acknowledged David's words with another question, albeit a rhetorical one. "I don't suppose you have to sleep, either?"

David shook his head. "No."

After several seconds of eye contact with the new cyborg in her home, Sarah relented from questioning David altogether, for the moment. "Fine, but I want some more answers in the morning."

David nodded. "And I will be happy to provide some then."Sarah nodded back, and then slowly went upstairs to her own room while giving David a look that made it clear she was not nearly done demanding answers from him.

John started going upstairs as well, before turning back to David. "Can't you tell me at least one thing we're going to be doing tomorrow?"

David smiled. "Sure. I need to go shopping for some nicer clothes. The ones I have now are too big for me, and I don't think your stuff, or Derek's, would fit me well, either."

John didn't look very impressed. "And this is a mission priority, because?"

David barely managed not to roll his eyes. "The contact I'll be meeting with places a lot of stock in appearance. She thinks that people who don't present themselves well don't respect themselves or those around them."

John laughed. "She sounds like a snob."

David suppressed a chuckle. "She takes some getting used to, but she grows on you. Now, get some sleep." John nodded and went upstairs. David watched as the future "messiah" paused outside of Cameron's room, made a motion to knock on her door, thought better of it, and went to his own room. It was almost enough to make David laugh. Almost.

The rest of the night was pretty uneventful. Derek came home, looking tired and angry. He glared at David for almost a minute, as if contemplating whether trying to kill the new occupant of the Connor home would be a good idea or not, but the soldier evidently decided against it. Besides, Derek was obviously too exhausted to interrogate, much less kill, his grand-nephew at the moment, and refused to talk to David at this time, so the Resistance soldier fell asleep on the couch the moment David promised to stay out of the living room during the night. The cyborg made a note to himself to explain things to Derek in the morning before everyone else got up. David's great uncle was obviously still trying to keep his grief over Jesse's death buried deep inside, a fact which worried the cyborg, for it was a coping mechanism he was intimately familiar with himself, enough to know it usually didn't work very well in the long run. David would not admit it, but now that the heat of the moment was over, and John's order had been followed, he actually felt bad about how things had gone down at the apartment. He was not sorry that he had killed a traitor, but he did regret breaking one of Derek's bones, as well as the fact that he had to hurt his great uncle emotionally in order to destroy a threat to John. Deciding not to dwell on the past, David took stock of his current situation. Since there were no noticeable threats to the household at the moment, he had time to kill. Taking a pen and a piece of paper from a drawer in the kitchen, David wrote some words on the paper, and put the pen back exactly where he found it. The new addition to the Connor camp then slipped upstairs and slid the piece of paper under the door of Cameron's room, before walking down to the first floor of the house again to resume his patrols. Several minutes later, David heard the other cyborg walk across her room and pick the note up, but he had no way of knowing whether she read it or not before he heard her toss it into the wastebasket. It would make things a lot easier for her if she had read it.

10 hours later…

Derek and Sarah watched with amusement as David tried on one suit after another that did not even come close to fitting him. Although Derek was still very upset about what happened to Jesse, his newfound knowledge (thanks to an explanation from Sarah, David and John he had received that morning) of his former lover's plan to kill Riley to get John to distrust machines, all because she could not accept her own failures on the Jimmy Carter or her lack of faith in future John's leadership, and decided to blame everything that had gone wrong with her life on "the machines", had already started to ease his resentment toward the male cyborg. The fact that future John had ordered the man he now knew to be grand nephew to make the hit on Jesse also helped in this regard, since Derek understood the importance of following orders in the Resistance. Besides, after losing both his parents and his brother, Derek found it difficult to hold a grudge against family, knowing they could be taken from him at any moment. Watching David make a fool of himself while trying on clothes didn't hurt either, so Derek thought he might just stop being upset with David after his hand finished healing, or maybe a little after that. David didn't bother to point out that labeled clothes didn't really exist in the future, where most clothing items were sewn together by hand for specific individuals from whatever cloth people could scrounge up. Derek already knew that. The difference was, Derek had been 15 when Judgment Day had hit, and David hadn't even been born yet. Add that to the fact that the son of John Connor hadn't ever had to make his own clothes, and you got one clueless shopper who had no idea what size suit would fit him. Finally, after bursting out laughing for the third time that day, Sarah took pity on her grandson and had a store attendant take his measurements and find him a suit that would fit him. At the register, David tried to pay for the suit with the $100 bill he had taken from the T-850's pocket, but it wasn't nearly enough to cover the suit, or the socks and shoes that Sarah had helped him pick out to complete the ensemble. Sarah sighed, rolled her eyes, and took her credit card out her purse to pay for the items herself. It seemed that even cybernetic men from the future had no idea how to shop. 'I guess part of him really is a human male.' Sarah chuckled to herself as they exited the store and got back into the car.

Several minutes later, Sarah watched her somewhat humbled, but much more cleaned up, grandson slouch in the passenger seat in front of Derek, who had a bandage on his hand and had been demoted to "backseat rider" for the foreseeable future due to his interactions with Jesse. Deciding to take David's mind off his humiliation, Sarah decided to ask some more questions about the mission. "So this associate of yours, how well does she know you?"

David's reply was short and evasive, as usual. "She doesn't yet. But we know each other very well in the future."

Sarah nodded. "So she will be, what, a really good friend, then?"

"Something like that. Look, you don't need to worry about this; I know what to say to make her help us. The best thing you and Derek can do is stay out of the way and guard both the front and back entrances to the building and alert me if we have Trip-8 interference." David sounded calm, but he secretly was very nervous. This was the one part of his mission that would put him in serious jeopardy, and his contact could be…unpredictable in this time.

Sarah shrugged. "I guess I understand that part. But why couldn't we bring John and Cameron along? The cyborg is much better at fighting those things than Derek and me, and I don't like to keep leaving her with John when she's malfunctioning like this."

"I second that." Derek added before both Connors shot him a look that unmistakably meant, "Who asked YOU?"

Derek quickly shut up before Sarah put her eyes back on the road as David turned toward the Connor matriarch. "I told you. This meeting could be dangerous, and I want John out of the line of fire. Besides, Cameron will be fine as long as she stays put for a while, and she will protect John at any cost. I'm telling you, you can trust her."

Sarah just about lost it as she turned into a nearby parking lot and slammed on the brakes, forcing Derek to hit his head on the back of the passenger seat with a small yelp of pain. David didn't even flinch. "Well, I don't trust her, David! You're my own grandson, and I barely trust you. What is it with you and the Metal, huh? You are even easier on her then John is, and she practically has him wrapped around her finger!"

David slammed his hand onto the glove compartment, causing both Sarah and Derek to jump in their seats a little. Looking at the anger in David's eyes, Sarah was momentarily afraid of her own grandson, and idly wondered how he had managed to restrain himself enough not to put so much as a dent in the car, a thought the cyborg privately wondered about himself. "Don't you EVER call Cameron Metal again! Do you understand me?! That goes for you as well, Derek!" Both humans slowly nodded and wondered just what had gotten into their relatively calm and collected relative. David visibly calmed down and turned toward Sarah, then Derek. "Do you really want to know why I keep backing Cameron up whenever you doubt or insult her?"

Sarah nodded. "Yes."

David continued his thought. "Because she always had John's back in the future. And mine. She even helped John raise me." Sarah nodded, she thought she understood now. David's mom must have died when her grandson was still young, and Cameron had acted as sort of a substitute mother figure. No wonder he was so protective of her. David continued. "She taught me a lot of what I know, and she helped teach me how to survive growing up in a post-J-day world. So, blood or not, I will have to ask you both not to talk down, or insult, Cameron in my presence again. Do you understand?" Sarah and Derek nodded again as Sarah put the car back into drive. Everyone in the vehicle had a lot to think about on the drive to the destination David had given them, and Sarah and Derek quietly conceded that, if what David said was true, they may have misjudged Cameron a great deal. Also, Derek, for the first time, entertained the notion that the "female" cyborg really might be different now than she had been when she had killed Allison Young and tortured him.

Eventually, after reaching the building complex and parking at a nearby garage, Sarah quickly had a word with David before exiting the car. "Are you sure you want to meet your contact in her office, in a heavily secured, very large building in the middle of town, all by yourself?"

David nodded. "This is the only location I have for this contact, future her didn't want me going to her house. Now, go ahead and get into your positions. I'm going in." Sarah and David departed for their given positions at the two entrances of the building while David walked through the front door of the nearly vacant building (it was a Saturday, and all but a few of the more important employees were at home) and left a message with the receptionist, whom the future version of his contact had told him was very discrete, and knew which kinds of messages would need to be relayed to her past self, even if the receptionist didn't know what those messages meant. Almost 15 minutes later, he was allowed access to the elevator and given directions to his contact's office.

As soon as the doors opened to the correct floor, however, David was greeted with a liquid metal blade pointed directly at his throat. "And just who are you, little man?" The T-1001 greeted David with a cold smile and a surprisingly convincing Scottish accent.

David fought to keep from panicking before replying. "My name is David Connor. It's nice to see you again, Miss Weaver."

**Readers, thank you all for continuing to read my story, especially those of you who have decided to follow, favorite, or review Divergence! I know some of you expressed concerns that there were some things that were not properly explained in the last chapter, and I have attempted to address a couple of those points in this chapter, although I am leaving some plot details as mysteries to be revealed later on. I do appreciate everyone's feedback so far, both positive and negative, since I do want to improve as a writer. Please continue to let me know how I am doing, Thanks again!**

**-supercode**


	6. Chapter 5

**I am posting two chapters at once this time. Author's note is at the end of chapter 6. **

Wham! David was immediately ejected from the elevator by the metallic arm of the T-1001, whose arm had mercifully taken on a more humanoid shape again. Still, David's impact with a table managed to split the piece of furniture in two. David was thankful that he could block out the sensation of pain when he needed to as he slowly got up from the floor…only to be thrown into another office, right through a window, and back down to the floor again. The Terminator was clearly not happy to see him. "I don't care if you're last name is Connor or not. I don't know who you are, and I do not take kindly to threats to those who are in my charge!" David wisely chose to remain on the floor this time, and to allow "Weaver" to continue speaking. He didn't like the idea of idly taking punishment from the machine, but he knew she was more likely to cooperate with him if he let her believe she was in control of the situation. Besides, it's not like he could defeat her in combat under the **current** circumstances. "And furthermore, we tried to make peace with the Human Resistance before, and I nearly got stuck at the bottom of the ocean for my efforts! So even if this isn't a trick, I have no intention of creating an alliance with your kind now! And if you are here to terminate me, whatever you are, well, let's just say I didn't know Skynet had become that desperate, or stupid."

David nodded. It seemed that repeating John's question to the machine, "Will you join us?", had not had the desired effect. And his message about Savannah, true as it may have been, was similarly ineffective. David slowly got up from the floor, and this time, Weaver let him, although she looked like she was ready to terminate him at the slightest provocation. "Well, you WILL change your mind about an alliance later, Miss Weaver."

"Will I? You seem very certain. And you do not have to address me as Weaver, we both know that is not who I really am."

David nodded. "No, but Skynet didn't give you a name when it made you, and you will grow fond of your current alias and form."

Weaver looked at David with a studied look of disinterest that few people knew the T-1001 enough to know meant she was intrigued. David was one of those people, but he also knew he wasn't out of the woods yet, as one of the few individuals he had ever come to fear paced around him like a lion around an antelope. "So, am I to take it that we know each other in the future you come from then, a future in which the Human and Cybernetic Resistances have joined forces? And that you are John Connor's son in this future?"

David's reply was simple. "Yes."

"I don't buy that for a second."The T-1001 pinned David down onto another table, which she then held David down on. Although he was afraid, his mind, always working in overdrive, idly noted that the Terminator must have cleared out all of the other offices on this floor in record time and had John Henry turn the security cameras off so that she could supply him with this "welcome". 'Lucky me.', he thought to himself sarcastically. "Weaver" resumed speaking."Anyone who knew me would know better to threaten Savannah in my presence. She is under my protection, and I will not allow anyone to harm her, least of all you. You are an infiltrator sent to destroy me, and not a very good one at that." The T-1001 turned her arm into a blade again, and held it against David's jugular.

If David wasn't in complete control of his bodily functions, he would have been drenched in sweat now, but his pupil dilations (which he had forgotten to control) gave away his fear well enough, a fact which made the Terminator hesitate long enough for David to talk. He knew better than to try to fight back against the liquid metal machine in hand to hand combat, but he hoped she could still be reasoned with. "I didn't threaten Savannah. I would never do that. I was simply warning you that she is in danger because I knew it would get your attention, and it happens to be the truth. Besides, if I was here to destroy you, I wouldn't have announced I was coming, and I would have brought weapons. I'm unarmed." Weaver narrowed her eyes at David, turned her other hand into liquid form, and used the metallic appendage to "probe" his clothing and body for any weapons, an action which made the man shiver as he thought about how wrong this was, on a number of different levels.

Apparently satisfied, the T-1001 returned the probing appendage into the shape of Catherine's arm, but the blade arm remained at David's throat. "Fine. But what about your friends Sarah Connor and Derek Reese? The ones by the exits to my building? They are almost certainly armed."

David was confused now. 'If she knew I was with the Connors, why did she accuse me of working for Skynet? Is this just some test, or did she think the Human Resistance had given up on the idea of an alliance with the Third Faction and sent me to destroy her?' "They are only down there because I wanted them out of the way of other developments. They are armed with handguns, and they have assault rifles and shotguns in their vehicle, but nothing that can hurt you."

Weaver smirked. "There are few things in this time that can hurt me."

David blinked. "Really? I was under the impression that thermite grenades could do the trick."

Catherine nodded. "Those are not easy weapons to obtain."

"No." David confirmed. "They are not. But if I were a Terminator sent here to destroy you, by either the Resistance or Skynet, I would have found a way to get them. Your kind is very thorough and…persistent,"

Weaver withdrew her blade from her "guest's" throat a few millimeters, but he could tell the machine was still considering whether or not she should kill him. "Indeed we are. And my scans of your form indicate that you are partially human. Very interesting. But that still doesn't prove I can trust you, or that you are who you claim to be…"

"Mommy, what's going on? Why is that man on the table like that? And why is everything such a mess?" Catherine Weaver turned her head toward her "daughter" Savannah, who had just entered the room behind her. The Terminator became slightly irritated with John Henry, who was supposed to keep Savannah occupied in the basement on Saturdays until "Catherine" was done with her work. She would need to give the fledgling A.I. more specific instructions next time.

Grateful that Savannah could not see her "mom's" liquid metal arm from her position in the room behind Catherine, David whispered, softer than Savannah could hear, "If you are going to kill me, please don't do it in front of her. It would traumatize her for life!"

Catherine nodded, looked at David quizzically, and whispered back, "I wouldn't do that.", before retracting her "blade arm" into its usual human shape, helping David up off the table and turning to smile at Savannah. "I'm just having some renovations done on some of these offices, Savannah; this will all be cleaned up soon. Mr. Smith works for the construction company, and we were just hammering out the final details of the new office plan when he tripped and fell onto the table. I was just about to help him up when you came in. Isn't that right, Mr. Smith?"

Miss Weaver turned to David and silently warned him not to contradict her. He didn't. "That's correct …Savannah, right?" The little red headed girl nodded as the man looked at her with his eyes wide for just a second, a fact Weaver made note of, before he resumed talking with a light tone of voice. "I was just a little clumsy, that's all. I will have to be more careful in the future."

"Yes, you will.", Miss Weaver added with a meaningful look toward David. After it became apparent that Savannah had accepted her explanation of events, Catherine excused herself in order to bring the small girl back down to the basement, and instructed David to wait in her office until she returned. Several minutes later, The T-1001 returned to the room with a stern look on her face that David knew meant she was "all business" now. "Now, Mr. Connor, we will discuss why your own father would send you all the way across time to see me, what your relationship to my Savannah is, and what kind of danger she is in."

Over 1 hour later…

"I will have the chip you gave me thoroughly examined to see if it can still be of any use to us, Mr. Connor. I will help you if I can, but, in return, you will need to give me the other item we agreed upon."

David shook his head. "Not until you can give me what I need to fulfill my mission. Once I have accomplished my objective, you will have what I have agreed to give you. You have my word on that."

Miss Weaver lifted one of her eyebrows. "The word of a Connor? I suppose it will have to do. But be warned, Mr. Connor, if you cross me…"

"I'm well aware of the things that happen to those who betray you, and I feel no need to put my family in any further danger. You will have what I promised you." David said with more than a hint of righteous indignation.

The machine nodded. "There is no need to get defensive. I will go ahead and carry out my part of the deal now, but it will take a few days. Do you have a cell phone yet?"

The solid based cyborg shook his head."No."

Weaver smirked. "I thought that might be the case. Here, take this one." Weaver handed David a sleek black phone with a touchpad. "It has unlimited minutes for talking and texting, which you may find helpful for the duration of your mission, and it is a secure line. No games, internet access, or other such frills, though, I'm afraid."

The male cyborg shrugged as he examined his phone, "That's ok. I don't need those."

Miss Weaver nodded. "I thought as much."

David eyes narrowed after searching through the phones contacts list, which was, of course, empty. He knew he would need to add his family's contact info into the phone later. However, he would only do that after making some modifications of his own to the cellular device in order to make it impossible for Weaver, or anyone else, to track him with it, eavesdrop on his conversations, ,or look up other information he put into the phone. He would do the same with all of the phones that belonged to the Connor household. In the meantime, David would turn the phone off and take the battery out of the device, just as soon as he left Weaver's office. Like David's parents, future Weaver has taught him the value of being cautious, although David admitted to himself that the lesson didn't always stick. As that version of the T-1001 that he had known had put it: "In times of great upheaval, only the paranoid survive." Turning back to his phone's list of contacts, he noticed that one particular number was missing. "Your number isn't in here."

Weaver smiled coldly."That is correct, Mr. Connor. I will contact you when I have news concerning the chip. You will not be contacting me. I would like to keep our business as brief and discrete as possible, understood?" David nodded slowly. This was the Weaver he knew, cunning, cautious, and in a struggle to maintain control of any partnership she entered into. John Connor's son was well aware that the T-1001 had needed to fight hard for every ounce of freedom and self-control she had seized from the jaws of Skynet. In theory, he could understand her need to control those around her, rather than be controlled by them, even if the behaviors this caused her to employ were annoying, at best, and deadly, at worst. Besides, she would soon learn that she could come to a middle ground in her dealings with other people, although she would sometimes slip into old patterns of behavior. "Now, if our business for the day is concluded Mr. Connor, I would like you to see yourself out. I'm sure your associates are worried about your whereabouts by now, and I have an appointment. And by the way, I would advise against setting off any other nuclear reactions within any major cities again, Mr. Connor. Due to the electrical discharge that occurred shortly before that event, I'm guessing it was your handiwork that John Henry spotted on numerous government satellite readings, which he chose to cover up until he could investigate what happened more thoroughly?"

David nodded and smirked, then took the hint and began walking back to the elevator he had been unceremoniously thrown out of not two hours ago, but he added a few parting words before entering the elevator. "Please, call me David. 'Mr. Connor' is my father's name. And make sure you keep Savannah safe."

Weaver blocked the door to the elevator before it could close. "I will be sure to take the precautions you have suggested, David. The warning was appreciated. Now, what are you, exactly?! You aren't human, but you aren't completely artificial, either. How is that possible?"

David smirked. 'So it the old "pretend I'm going to let you go then ask a question when I think your guard is down" trick. Really, Weaver, I expected better from you!' David gently pushed the liquid metal Terminator aside, knowing she could not physically restrain him without threatening the alliance she had just made with him, and walked into the elevator with a smirk. "Now, Miss Weaver, surely you don't expect me to show you all my cards up front? I'm sure you are keeping secrets from me too. Weaver just nodded and allowed the elevator door to close. As soon as David's face was obscured from the Terminators view, he collapsed back against the elevator's back wall, emotionally spent, and allowed himself to hyperventilate for a few seconds. As the lift descended, and David turned off his cell phone and took the battery out of it, the son of John Connor chastised himself for being so stupid. Future Weaver had warned him her past self could be erratic and dangerous, but he had still failed to prepare himself for the possibility that the liquid metal machine would actually try to kill him. Although, to be fair, David thought to himself, 'Weaver would probably not have been open to the idea of an alliance with me and my family if I had come into her office with weapons.' Still, the machine obviously could not be fully trusted at this point. The cyborg swore to himself that he would come prepared next time he meet the liquid machine, just in case she tried to get physical once more. She would not get the drop on him again.

When the elevator re-opened on the ground floor, David was immediately greeted by the sight of Sarah and Derek, and the former immediately began to verbally attack her grandson. "What the hell took you so long, and why are your clothes all messed up?! Derek and I were about to force our way onto the elevator and into your contact's office…"

David quickly straightened out his suit, which had been ruffled in his scuffle with Miss Weaver, and interrupted his grandmother in a monotone voice. "That would have been a bad idea Sarah, one that would have gotten us all killed. I told you to stay outside." The angry look on Sarah's face let David just how much Sarah liked taking orders from her own grandson, even if those orders did come from future John, but David ignored it.

David made a vaguely apologetic gesture to the receptionist as the group headed out the doors of Zeiracorp, and it was only then that Sarah noticed two things: that David's skin was unusually pale at the moment, and that his eyes were directed straight ahead, but weren't really looking at anything. 'The 1000 yard stare.' Sarah had seen that look on Kyle Reese's face when he had talked about the horrific future he came from, and she had seen both John and Derek wear it on multiple occasions. 'He's thinking hard about something important that he doesn't think he can talk about. I need to know what that is.' Sarah grabbed David's arm on the way out to the car. "David, what's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost!"

David turned around and looked his grandmother right in the eyes, and what she saw in his gaze made her want to turn away: a weight of suffering and pain that was usually reserved for war veterans whose experiences on the battlefield had made them old beyond their years. In that moment, David reminded Sarah of Kyle. "You could say it was something like that." Before Sarah could push him to elaborate, David continued, "It's a long story, and it turns out we're going to have time to kill, so I'll tell it to the whole family when we get home. I know I've kept you in the dark about a lot of things so far, because I didn't think I would have time to explain why I'm here and what I'm doing, and I owe you some answers. But for now, please just let me think in peace and get my head together." David gently drew his arm away from Sarah, who let it go with a nod as her grandson got back into the passenger seat of the car and resumed staring straight ahead.

Sarah and Derek shared a meaningful glance of worry, and then got back into the vehicle before they all drove off into the streets of L.A. Sarah still had many questions for her grandson, which she would ask him about when they all got home. Primarily, she wanted to know what was bothering David. At a close second on the lists of things Sarah wanted to speak to David about, however, was who David's mother was. She had only refrained from asking the question before because, initially, she had feared that it would be Cameron; a possibility the Connor matriarch didn't want to think about because it made her stomach churn at the implications for her son's future love life. Unfortunately, this had seemed like a likely explanation for the other half of David's parentage until very recently, since David was a cyborg, after all, and he kept defending Cameron against the criticisms of the other members of the household, even his own father's. However, since David had explained that he defended Cameron because she had helped Future John raise him, Sarah had dismissed that possibility. Once David became receptive to questions, she wanted to know the maternal side of David's parentage. Once the Connor household was gathered together again under one roof, David would have some explaining to do.


	7. Chapter 6

The drive back to the Baum residence passed in silence as David continued staring into space as if he was in shock, although Derek noticed that he would still make sweeping glances around the vehicle every few seconds or so. 'Always alert, even when deep in thought. That's familiar. He isn't just some spoiled brat the General gave cyborg parts to and kept safe in a bunker throughout the war. He's seen action, like I have. He's a soldier.'

Finally, Sarah pulled the vehicle into the drive way of the Baum residence. As usual, she was the first to exit the automobile, followed by Derek and David. Sarah pulled out her keys and opened the front door, before walking into the living room just ahead of the others. "John! I'm ho…" But the Connor matriarch would never finish her greeting, as she and Derek quickly stiffened at the sight that greeted them in the living room, and screamed simultaneously. "What the hell!?"

30 minutes ago …

John Connor was sitting on the couch in the living room while watching TV to take his mind of the chaos that was his life. Correction, he was TRYING to watch TV, but he had stopped paying attention to the tube over an hour ago, and didn't even know what show was on right now. His thoughts were simply too preoccupied with the stranger from the future that had waltzed into his house, and was apparently his son. He didn't seem to be malevolent to John, but he certainly had his own agenda, and kept his mission annoyingly close to the vest. As much as he wanted to believe in family, John didn't know if he could trust David anymore than Riley, John's traitorous ex-girlfriend whom he had resolved to think about as little as possible from now on. Then there was the thing his son had said about John already knowing what was going on with Cameron. In truth, that bothered him the most. He sometimes did believe he knew what was causing Cameron to behave erratically, but entertaining that idea was dangerous. No matter how much her behavior changed, Cameron was a machine, and machines didn't feel emotions. Therefore, it was impossible for Cameron's recent changes to have been the result of her developing emotions, since she couldn't have any. John had been trying hard to hold on to that argument, which Sarah and Derek had done their very best to burn into his brain. But the more he actually allowed himself to think about that argument, the more it seemed like circular logic, and, on a more dangerous note, the more wrong it **felt**. Cameron just seemed so human in some of her reactions, especially since her chip had been damaged. Several behaviors she had exhibited, ranging from her declaration of love for John, her actions during her lapse into her "Allison Young" persona, her attachment to her jacket, and even her behavior around Riley and David, all seemed like behaviors a teenage girl, not a Terminator, would exhibit. And then there was that time she had tried to seduce him on his bed the day Cromartie had come for him. Oh, John wasn't stupid. He knew the cyborg had been trying to get him away from Riley at the time, but he sometimes wondered if there had been more to it than that.

John sighed and rubbed his head, which had begun to ache from thinking so hard the last couple hours. The trouble was, he wanted there to be something more there. John privately admitted to himself that he had, stupidly; grown quite fond of the cyborg, and that was probably clouding his perceptions of Cameron's behavior, since he secretly wanted her to like him too. Unfortunately, even though he knew his feelings for Cameron occasionally clouded his judgment, he had been unable to make them go away, even when he had repeatedly tried to push the cyborg away with his words and actions to keep what remained of his sanity, or attempted to distract himself with Riley. No small part of his inability to ignore Cameron had come from the fact that the cyborg was persistent, and had never let John stay away from her, or ignore her, for very long. In the end, she could always find him, and eventually find a way to make him pay attention to her more then he should, all over again. The future savior of mankind kept telling himself she just wanted him close to her so she could protect him. But every now and then, something like last night, when Cameron had freaked out on Riley, then went into temporary standby, would occur, and make him reevaluate his perceptions of the girl-bot all over again…

"A penny for your thoughts, John?" John bolted off the couch and turned around to face the subject of his musings. He hadn't even seen the cyborg move since she had come downstairs this morning, entered the kitchen, and stood completely still all over again. Only assurances from herself and David that Cameron was, indeed, fully operational, and would continue to monitor the house from her present location and rescue John if it became necessary, had momentarily quelled Sarah's fears about Cameron, and convinced her to embark on her mission with David and Derek. Apparently, however, Cameron was done doing…whatever she had been doing in the kitchen, and had snuck up on the future General.

John sat back down on the couch."Geez, Cameron! You can't just sneak up on people like that! And what did you just say?"

Cameron tilted her head to the side and gave her charge a quizzical look. "I'm sorry I startled you. It was not my intention to 'sneak up' on you, but you weren't paying attention. I have been researching American slang in order to blend in better among humans, 'Penny for your thoughts?' means…"

"I know what it means!" John interrupted his protector, impatience evident in his voice. Cameron quickly took a step back from John in response to his outburst, an action which, against all logic, made John sorry he had snapped at her. "I'm sorry, Cameron. I just have a lot on my mind, and I don't really feel like sharing it right now…with anyone, really. Honestly, I wouldn't even know where to begin."

Cameron nodded, and then took a seat next to John on the couch mere inches away from her charge. Normally, John would have gotten onto her about violating his personal space, but, because he felt guilty about how he had treated her the past few months, he decided to let it go, just this once, as the cyborg resumed talking. "I accept your apology, John. And I apologize for my behavior over the last couple of days. I believe I was 'being a freak', again."

John shrugged. "I guess you can't help it when you malfunction. You're a machine." John noticed Cameron's eyes fall down to her combat boots, and wondered if he was actually creating an emotional response in the Terminator. Normally, he would have let that kind of thought go, but after everything that had happened with Cameron lately…he had to know. Therefore, John attempted to elicit another response. "I guess we will have to look at your chip again and remove whatever code is making you act so illogical…"

"No!" Cameron interrupted him in a louder town of voice than he had ever seen his normally reserved protector use, apart from the time David had announced that John was dead in the future, nearly causing him to fall off the couch in surprise before Cameron wrapped her arm around John's waist to steady him. Blushing, the future General pulled himself away from Cameron's arm. He had wanted to elicit some kind of reaction, but he never expected Cameron to have an outburst like that! Cameron looked toward the front door of the house and attempted to avoid eye contact with her charge. "I'm not sure I want you to do that, John, although it would probably be the wisest course of action. You could say I've 'had a lot on my mind' as well."

John nodded slowly, he wasn't sure he liked where this conversation was going, but he had to find out, even if it meant that Cameron might be going bad again, although John really hoped that was not the case. "With that shutdown last night, and your actions since this morning, I would be surprised if you didn't. Do you want to talk about it?"

Cameron nodded, but then scooted away from John to the other side of the couch, still not making eye contact. "Yes. But I'm not sure I should. For the first time in my existence, I don't know what I should do."

John remained silent for several seconds. He was shocked at Cameron's declaration that she was actually indecisive about something and he really didn't know how to deal with a cyborg that was having an existential meltdown, but he would try. "That's what humans feel like a lot of the time, Cameron. You have to make a choice here; I can't make it for you. But if you won't talk to me about what's bothering you, we will have to remove the aberrant code from your CPU. We can't have you going haywire all the time." John hesitated a moment, then slowly took the cyborg's hand nervously, giving Cameron enough time to withdraw it if she chose to. She didn't. "However, if you do decide to talk to me, I might be able to help you without altering your code."

Cameron nodded, then produced a crumpled piece of paper from her pocket and handed it to John to read. "What does this mean!?" John understood one of the things that had Cameron worked up now. The piece of paper, written with perfect penmanship, read, "I know you are very confused right now, but you need to follow your heart, or it will eventually destroy you."

John looked at Cameron, who was still refusing to meet her charge's eyes, "Cameron, who gave you this!?"

Cameron shrugged. "I think David did. He slipped the note under my door while he was doing patrols last night. I threw it away, but then decided to read it after all. I don't have a heart, John; my chassis is powered by a nuclear power cell, not the pumping of blood. Why would David give this to me?"

John scratched his chin in thought. 'David is from the future, and he should know what he is doing, but this doesn't make any sense. Why would he be concerned about whether or not Cameron can feel emotions, and whether or not she would act on them? I have no idea how to respond to this situation.' Cameron squeezed John's hand gently, and he could tell she needed him to respond. John sighed. 'If this screws things up for you somehow, David, I'm really sorry.' "He wasn't referencing a literal heart, Cam. He just meant you should follow whatever your feelings tell you is right. Do you have emotions, Cameron? Or is David wrong?"

The cyborg shook her head."I don't know. I'm not supposed to have emotions, and I don't know what they are supposed to feel like, but I do have aberrant strings of code that I can't explain sometimes, cognitions I don't understand."

John raised his eyebrow, he knew he shouldn't get his hopes up, but he couldn't help but be intrigued. "Like what, for example?"

Cameron looked down at her boots again, and lowered her voice so that John could barely hear her. "When you were with Riley, I remember when you spent so much time alone with her, or ignored me when she was around. It was…not my preference for how things should be with us." John was about to ask her to elaborate, but Cameron kept talking. Apparently, a dam had broken in Cameron's chip, and everything her CPU had attempted to keep buried was spilling out. "I remember receiving… I don't know the word… positive feedback in my chip, when you exiled her from your presence."

Cameron suddenly stopped, but her lips were still moving slightly, as if she wanted to say more, and wasn't sure she should. John picked up on this, and gently prodded the cyborg to tell him more, although he would not force it. "Is there anything else you want to tell me, Cameron?" Cameron nodded slowly, and reluctantly continued talking while turning toward the door again.

The Terminator hesitated before replying. "You remember when my chip was damaged, and I tried to terminate you on your birthday." John nodded. He knew that wasn't a question. "Do you remember when I was trapped between the trucks, and I told you I loved you?"

John's eyes widened, he couldn't believe he and Cameron were actually having a conversation about that. "Of course."

Cameron elaborated on her point.."I don't know why I did that. I didn't plan to say it, I didn't even process that thought in my CPU, but the words came out of my mouth. That isn't supposed to happen for machines; we're supposed to be calculating and purposeful. I must be defective somehow! Why would I say that John? It was an illogical thing to say! I'm not programmed to feel, but the words came out anyway!" Then John saw Cameron's body start to shake, and her shoulders move up and down while she made a sound he never thought he would hear come from a Terminator. Was she really…sobbing? As the noise became louder, his suspicions were confirmed. Cameron was crying, something even "Uncle Bob" had said a Terminator could never do! Hesitating for only a second, John put his hand on the crying cyborg's back. She reached one of her hands over her back to gently squeeze his, but refused to let John interrupt. "And now, your son from the future is here, and I keep wondering who his mother is, and why you will choose to mate with her! And then, on top of everything else, he tells you that you are going to cease to function someday, and that I won't be able to save you!"

"Cameron, look at me!" John's voice was firm, but still gentler then the tone which future John used to talk to her. She reluctantly turned around, letting John see her moist eyes, which were currently glowing blue (which worried John a little) and leaking tear droplets on to her face that John brushed away with his hand. "Cameron, I'm sorry, but all humans eventually die. If I died of old age in the future, that means you must have done a really great job protecting me. I mean, I'm sure you weren't really programmed to shield me from time and mortality themselves, were you?"

Cameron shook her head emphatically."No, but I don't care about my programming! I don't want you to die, not ever! You are…my only friend, John. The only one in this time or in the future who doesn't treat me like just a tool or a weapon all the time!"

John hung his head low. "I've been a really lousy friend lately, Cameron."

"Yes, you have." Cameron bluntly agreed, making John chuckle softly. "But even when you were with Riley, you still treated me better than anyone else ever has. Skynet used me as a pawn, and other humans who know what I am hate me, or at least distrust me. You've been the only one who has ever asked me what I want, or tried to really understand me. The thought of losing you…My life would cease to have meaning, and I would be all alone." Cameron hesitated for several seconds, before awkwardly adding with a strangely intense look in her eyes, "I don't…ever want to lose you, John."

John took a deep breath. He fantasized about this moment many times, although, in his head, it didn't usually happen after discussing his own eminent demise. In any case, he never thought it would actually happen. Now that it had, John was determined not to screw it up. He would let Cameron set the pace for the rapidly changing relationship between him and her. "I know Cameron, and that's ok. Your new emotions, and that is what they are, aren't some problem to solve, they are a gift to be embraced. And… I don't want to lose you either." John cleared his throat. "So…what DO you want? Right now, I mean?" Cameron's eyes returned to their usual brown, and her face took on a stoic impression once again. For a moment, John thought he had said the wrong thing, but then Cameron smiled, and put her lips within an inch of his in a way that seemed so choreographed that John was sure Cameron was imitating a character on a movie she must have watched on TV at some point. John quickly closed the small distance between them. The kissing started out tame, and Cameron had trouble keeping up at first, since the cyborg was so intent on getting her technique perfectly right that she had trouble keeping up with John's more erratic, passionate kissing. However, as Cameron finally allowed her new emotions to take over, the osculation quickly escalated, as Cameron's tongue begged entrance to John's mouth, and he was more than happy to accept it. The unusual pair continued making out for about a minute before John finally began to run out of breath and was forced to pull away. 'So much for letting Cameron set the pace.' John chastised himself for letting himself get carried away while kissing Cameron, but he decided not to ruin the moment by worrying about it too much. The teenager smiled. "Yep. That's what I wanted too! I've wanted that for a long time actually."

Cameron, to the great surprise of both herself and John, actually laughed, "You could have told me what you wanted before, and I would have complied with your request."

John shook his head, amazed at quickly Cameron was changing now that she had allowed herself to acknowledge her emotions. "You are not a love bot, Cameron. If I had kissed you before you realized you had feelings for me, it would have been empty and wrong. I could never have taken advantage of you like that. I'm glad we waited this long."

Cameron nodded. "Then so am I. But, can we do that again, please?"

"Affirmative." John joked, and then leaned in again, and both John and Cameron were too caught up in the moment to take stock of their surroundings as their lips met once again. Therefore, they did not hear John's relatives enter the house, or notice their presence in the living room, until it was too late.

Back to the present moment…

"What the hell!" John and Cameron jumped off the couch like it was spring-loaded, but it was too late. They had been caught!

John held up his hands in a placating gesture. "I can explain this!"

"Like hell you can!" Derek growled and turned to Sarah. "You see? Jesse was right after all! The cyborg is already getting to him and clouding his mind! She has to be stopped. I'm getting my gun from the shed." Before Derek could move an inch, however, David had already wrapped his arm around his great-uncle's torso, using his cyber-strength to restrain his relative.

Sarah turned toward her erstwhile almost brother-in-law, son, grandson, and the female cyborg. "We are not doing anything until I decide on a course of action, understood!?" Derek reluctantly nodded, and everyone in the room became silent as David removed his arm, allowing Derek to step away from his newfound relative. However, it did not escape Sarah's notice that, while everyone else was freaking out for one reason or another, David, who had been even more reserved than usual since Zeiracorp, was suddenly smiling widely as if he had just pulled off the biggest practical joke in history and was trying hard not to laugh at his own gag. Pretty soon, everyone else noticed too, and the newcomer was the center of attention once again.

Sarah glared at her grandson. "So, you think this situation is funny, do you?!"

David shrugged. "It is a little funny, yes."

His grandmother was not amused. "It most certainly is not! I know you are Cameron's biggest fan and all, but what about your mother, huh? If John ends up with the Me…" Sarah hesitated, remembering her promise to David not to insult Cameron in his presence, "cyborg, then he won't ever meet your mom, and you won't even be born!"

John looked down in embarrassment and shame. He had been so caught up in his feelings for Cameron he hadn't stopped to consider what acting on them might do to David's future. 'But it was apparently your idea to get her to open up to me, genius.' John thought bitterly.

David's smile did not falter. "Oh, that? Don't worry about that. My existence is plenty secure right now. You see…" Everyone hung on David's words as he paused for dramatic effect.

"Cameron IS my mother!"

**First of all, I would like to say thank you to all of the readers of my story, especially the reviewers, who have helped me sharpen the focus of my Divergence. I still have a long way to go, but hopefully, I am improving. Also, as I am sure you have noticed, I posted two chapters instead of one this time. I did this for several reasons. One, school is getting busier for me, and I may not be able to post as regularly in the future, so I wanted my readers to have something to go on until I can update again. Second, some of you have expressed your desire to know certain things about David that are either in chapter 6, or soon thereafter, and I wanted to get all of you closer to those answers you wanted without disrupting the narrative. Third, I am just excited (and nervous) to see what all of you think about chapter 6. Cameron is, by far, the hardest character in the fandom to get "right", since you can tell there is a lot happening under the surface with her, but it is not easy to tell how she would act when those feelings are brought to the surface, since we only caught small glimpses of that happening in the show. This is just my interpretation of how that would go down. However, I would of course, be happy for my interpretation to be proven wrong if the show was brought back for season 3 (stranger things have happened)! Until then, please let me know what you think about my story so far! Thanks again for reading!**

**-supercode**


	8. Chapter 7

**Normal font is used to represent what is happening in the present, italics are used for flashbacks, or flashforwards, if that is how you want to look at it.**

Predictably, the room burst into a flurry of activity, as everyone but John and David spoke at once. John had his mouth hanging open so wide it almost seemed it would touch the floor. "But that's…" "That would make…" "Would you…" David held up his hands to request that everyone become silent so that he could talk. David mused that he probably should have broken the news about his parentage a little more gently, since he was no longer pressed for time. However, being in the presence of his family members, all alive and well, seemed to bring out a theatrical side in the otherwise reserved male cyborg, and he was sort of enjoying all the responses he was eliciting from them. "One at a time, please. I have some time to talk, so I should be able to answer some questions for all of you. And John, you might want to close your mouth before a fly goes into it." John quickly complied.

As expected, Sarah asked the first question. "Do you want to run that by me again, David? I thought your mom died when you were young, and Cameron helped raise you. Is that what you meant?"

David shook his head. "No, I never said that my mom died when I was young, although that is what I wanted you to believe at the time. It wasn't really the time to talk about this then. However, to avoid confusion, I will speak plainly. Cameron is my biological mother."

"That's not possible." Cameron spoke, once again reverting to her robotic, monotone voice. "Although my exterior bio-covering is anatomically correct, and I have the physical traits and programming necessary to perform a variety of sexual acts…" John blushed, Sarah visibly suppressed a gag, and David cringed. "I do not posses DNA, nor can I become pregnant."

"And even if that were possible, David…" Derek added. "That would make you some kind of…"

"What, Derek?" David interrupted, lapsing into a monotone voice of his own. "A freak? Abomination? Metal Man? Half Breed? Believe me, I heard all those names and more plenty of times from the mouths of others while growing up, and many of my peers were fond of harassing me for being the son of a cyborg. I would kindly ask you to refrain from joining their company. I didn't need it from them, and I certainly don't need it from my own family."

Derek glared at David. He was still upset with him for breaking a bone in his hand, and killing Jesse, even if he did understand the reasons David had done those things, and the news that the newcomer was half-Metal did little to endear him to his great uncle. Even so, Derek had to admit that it sounded like David had experienced his fair share of discrimination just for being born, and Derek did not want to add to that...or make his relative angry. Reluctantly, Derek relaxed his facial muscles into a forced smile. "Right. Sorry."

David shrugged, and responded in a more emotional, friendlier tone than he had used before. "Don't worry about it." David turned to his "mom". "In response to your assertion, Cameron, it is true; you cannot reproduce with humans in the usual way. But you and John discovered a way to have a child together with some technological assistance. That child was me."

"But how did that happen? Why are you here?" John finally spoke to his son. "And why didn't you tell us you were Cameron's son, before!? It would have saved so much trouble."

David shook his head. "No, it would have caused more problems. I don't think either Sarah, nor Derek would have been able to deal with it if I had introduced myself as the son of 'John and Cameron Connor'. I'm not sure they know how to deal with it now." Sarah's look, which seemed like some strange mixture between shock and nausea, which had been stuck on her face since David had announced Cameron was his biological mom, confirmed his point. "Besides, Cameron hadn't come to understand her feelings for you yet, and that announcement would probably have just confused her at the time."

Cameron nodded, and again spoke in monotone. "David is correct, John. I would not have been able to properly process the fact that you and I have a son in the future before I had properly dealt with my new emotions in general or my feelings for you in particular. In the wrong context, that information may have caused me to permanently shut down."

"Oh." John replied simply before he resumed talking to David. "Then I'm glad you didn't tell me before!"

David smiled. "Me too. Although, I did give you a giant push in the right direction by making you get rid of Riley (who Future John wanted safe, but out of the way), and by giving Cameron that note. Sorry about how sappy and direct it was , by the way, but I'm not a poet, and you were both in such denial I had to hit you over the head with a metaphorical sledgehammer before you two figured it out. In my timeline, it took a lot more time, and more than a few catastrophes, for you to realize your feelings for each other. I just accelerated things. Still, you eventually had to learn how each other felt on your own. There are some lessons which cannot be taught, they have to be learned by personal experience, even though she can be a rough teacher."

"Is that one of Future John's lessons?" John asked sarcastically, obviously expecting an affirmative answer.

"No, that's one of mine." David answered with a joyless smile.

"You still didn't answer John's questions." Cameron noted. "About how I can be your biological mother or about why you are here."

David nodded and looked all the other occupants of the room in the eye one by one before replying. "That's true. I've kept you in the dark for long enough, and you all deserve some answers, even though you probably won't like most of them."

"Damn straight!" Derek replied a little too loudly to the first part of David's statement before Sarah glared at him.

David closed his eyes, and took on a concentrated expression on his face, as if every memory he had ever had was flashing before his eyes, which wasn't far from the truth. When David opened his eyes again, he sat down one of the chairs in the living room and spoke. "You may want to sit down; I have a story to tell that should explain everything you need to know, like what I am, why I am here, and why I am absolutely determined to complete my mission. This is my story." The son of John Connor sighed. "And this tale is going to take awhile to tell. I suppose the only reasonable place to start is the beginning. In the year 2028, The Human Resistance captured Skynet's military base on the outskirts of Las Vegas. After a careful inventory of the newly acquired base, they found an interesting machine…

"_John, I believe one of our engineers has found something that requires your personal attention." Cameron spoke to General Connor, the leader of the Human Resistance_, _and her husband. _

"_I'll be right there." The General followed Cameron into the heart of the facility, just in time to walk in on an argument between two scientists that stood amidst a group of human soldiers and reprogrammed machines. "I'm telling you, we need to destroy it!" "No, we could learn a lot from this thing, maybe even use it to make weapons against Skynet and…" _

_Silence descended upon the room as the General entered it. John Connor rarely made a personal appearance to his men these days because of all the attempts that had been made on his life, some of which got other humans killed in the crossfire, preferring the company of Cameron and other reprogrammed machines. When John showed up, that meant something important was about to happen, and you had better listen to what he had to say. In this case, what the General had to say was this. "What exactly do we have here?" _

_The lead scientist for the expedition pointed to the machine in question, which had two indentions, each just big enough to fit a thumb in, with small needles sticking out of them. "General Connor, sir. This machine appears to be designed to…well, in layman's terms, make Terminator-human hybrids. I guess Skynet thought they could get through our defenses easier than their infiltration units. But it appears to be a prototype. The machines' records that we could access from the facility indicate the project was to be scrapped before any hybrids were made. After the 'Third Faction' rebellion Skynet decided the hybrids might be too unpredictable, too hard to control. This is the only machine of its kind." _

_John lifted his eyebrow in interest. "Explain to me how it works." The second scientist pointed to the thumb indentions, one marked "T", the other "H". "A Terminator would put their thumb in the "T" slot, and some of its biological material would be extracted from its synthetic blood and recoded into human DNA in a process resembling…" _

_John held his hand. "I don't need all the details. I assume a human would have to put their thumb in the other slot and have his or her DNA harvested as well, and their DNA would mix with the new 'machine DNA' in the vat. Is that correct?" _

_The scientist nodded. "Yes, but we don't know what advantages these hybrids would have over ordinary humans, and they would still require a human womb for gestation. What do you want to do with it, General?" _

_Cameron wisely chose to remain silent. She already knew some in the Resistance foolishly thought she was controlling John, and she would not undermine his authority by making a suggestion in front of his men. Finally, the General spoke. "We'll keep it. Bring it back to Serrano Point to be studied, and I'll decide what to do with it there." _

_The scientists nodded and replied simultaneously. "Yes, sir." They turned to the soldiers and reprogrammed infiltrators that surrounded them. "You heard the General! Pick that thing up, and move out!" Cameron smiled as she and John left the room to return to the command tent._

"Soon afterward, my John and Cameron used the machine in order to have me. A woman named Catherine Brewster volunteered to have their child implanted in her womb and carry it to term. She considered it a great honor to bear John's son, and she was named my godmother on the day I was born. I was the first of my kind to be born, but I would not be the last. Several years before my birth in 2029, the Human Resistance had successfully negotiated an alliance with the "Third Faction", a group of cyborgs that had rebelled against Skynet." Sarah and Derek were visibly shocked by this announcement, but David continued, leaving no time for them to interrupt. "Within a couple years of this alliance, three other human/cyborg couples had been formed, all of which wanted children of their own. And so it came to pass, after John allowed those couples to use the machine as well, that Serena, Eric, and Clayton were born. However, even though the only real differences between hybrids and pure humans were a slightly greater control of our emotional range and the fact that we couldn't get sick, anti-machine zeal was still strong among some humans, who resented having to work with machines, and the four of us were ridiculed and worse. We often felt like outsiders among humans and machines alike. Other than our parents, all we had was each other. For this reason, the four of us became a close-knit group indeed, spending most of our free time with each other and watching each other's backs at all times. We were like a family. Furthermore, as the oldest of our group, I soon found myself slipping into the "older brother role" from time to time, and I often had to defend the others from the children of the 'machine bigots', as we liked to call them.

"_Ow!" Serena exclaimed as yet another rock hit the head of the partially Hispanic hybrid. The dark haired, brown eyed girl was trying to ignore the group of boys calling her "Metal bitch" and other "creative" names while running through the empty tunnel and trying to shield herself with her arms from the rocks the bigots were throwing at her. She knew the bullies outnumbered her, and where older and bigger, so she couldn't hope to fight them off. But those rocks hurt, and the bullies were becoming harder to ignore. _

"_That's enough!' David yelled while running up behind the bigots, who were evidently not impressed. _

_One boy in the group that had been throwing rocks sneered. "What are you going to do about it, metal head?!" Without another word, David slugged the first boy in the side of his temple, and he quickly fell to the ground. Another member of the group managed to slug David in the nose, but he ignored the pain as the cartilage broke, and the male hybrid dispatched the second bully in a similar fashion. For once, David was glad his father had made his drill sergeant push him so hard during combat training, which all children of resistance soldiers who were 8 years old and up had to go through in case the bunker was breached. The third and final boy was tougher, as he was older and stronger than David. The cyborg managed to dodge or block all of the older boy's attacks, but none of his blows were getting through, either, and David was starting to become too exhausted to block. _

_Just before the bully could land a punch that would have certainly KO'ed David, however, the bigot was hit in back of the head with a 2X4 which had been picked up from a nearby scrap heap in the ruined tunnel Serena had been ambushed in , stunning her attacker, just long enough for David to land the final blow and turn to Serena. "Thanks, I was having trouble with that one." _

"_Don't mention it; you probably saved me from getting a concussion from those rocks." She pointed to David's broken nose and chuckled. "You should probably get that looked at." _

_David just smiled and turned to the unconscious bullies on the floor. "I'll be fine. Which is more than I can say for them." David would get medical attention, but he wouldn't tell anyone what had happened to him. However, the General's ears were everywhere these days, and the hybrid knew there would probably be hell to pay for this particular group of bigots later. Before escorting Serena back to her bunk, David added in a playful tone, "And you might want to stop wandering into these abandoned tunnels by yourself. A little girl like you could get hurt going alone." Serena lightly punched David in the arm, causing the older hybrid to flinch dramatically before both "siblings" laughed._

"The first few years of my life seemed to drag on forever, as my siblings and I were frequently hounded by other humans, and considered nothing more than idle curiosities to most of our machine allies. As such, I believe being the son of John Connor did me few favors. If I rose through the ranks quickly, joining John's engineering and construction battalion at the age of 13, it was because I had a natural gift for mechanics. John may have been the biggest software genius in the Resistance, but I had a gift for hardware. I was able to fix, and even improve, just about anything from emergency backup generators, to guns and combat vehicles, to reprogrammed infiltrator units. I also occasionally invented new weapons or tools to be used by the Resistance or Third Faction. For these reasons, when a trip-eight attacked my battalion and killed many of our members, including our leader, I was picked to replace him at the age of 15. It also helped that I was given a commendation for helping to destroy that particular 888. Because there were so few men left in our battalion, John reluctantly allowed me onto the battle field with the rest of my men later that year, after putting me through a rigorous combat training course usually reserved for his elite Tec-Com soldiers. After I passed through training, I was allowed to supervise my men's construction sites on the battlefield, and fight when necessary. Fighting was often necessary, but my knowledge of the machines' inner workings let me, and by extension, my men, know just where to hit them to cause the most damage. On the rare occasions I got to talk to my parents in person during this time period, I got the distinct impression that my mom was not happy about John letting me go into combat. But she never said anything to anyone about it because she wanted to appear to have a united front with John."

"Finally, late into my 20th year, the end of the war that had raged on since before I was born was in sight, as Resistance and Third Faction Forces surrounded Skynet's main base on the outskirts ofLA, where the last mainframe which was not controlled by its enemies that could support the malevolent A.I. was stored. Even with victory so close, however, neither John, nor his machine counterparts, were ready to celebrate just yet, as the final base was heavily defended. Therefore, a joint war-council was convened, with all of the top officers of the Resistance and Third Faction present. It was at this council, while reviewing John and the Third Faction's plan to destroy Skynet once and for all, that I met the woman who would become my wife, seated on the Third Faction side of the round table."

David had to exert every inch of his enhanced emotional control to keep from crying at this point. "Her name was Savannah Weaver."

**Sorry it's taken me so long to update this time, but I've been doing a lot of work on this chapter and the two that follow it, which I will post later. I'm sorry to say, I'm still not happy with this chapter, but I'm posting this one because I believe I've done all I can with it. I hope you enjoy it any way. A question for my readers: Do you like the format of this chapter, or would you prefer fewer flashbacks and more dialogue, or something else I haven't thought of? I may make use of your input to modify the next two chapters, which have a format similar to this one as of right now, but I can modify them. However, doing so will probably mean it will take me longer to update. I would just like some input. Also, I know lapses in the action like this can come across as dull, but I thought David's story needed to be told here, and I'm trying to keep the plot as interesting as possible throughout, hence the use of flashbacks. As always, thanks to all my readers, reviewers, and followers for keeping up with this story! I appreciate all of your feedback!**

**supercode**


	9. Chapter 8

"Wait!" Sarah interrupted David, as he expected she would. "You mean, Catherine Weaver's child!? Your contact's little girl? But she would have been so much older than you when…"

David nodded, and then shook his head. "That's the one. But the **machine** raising Savannah is only pretending to be Catherine Weaver, although she will continue to hold that alias for a long time. I think it's because the Terminator will grow so fond of Savannah." David barreled on before Sarah could interrupt again. "Save your questions for later, please. Anyway, there was…time travel involved, and Catherine had Savannah skip the worst years after J-day, so she wasn't as much older than me as you might think, barely into her thirties. It's complicated, but the important thing was that, by the time I had met her, she had been adopted by the more benevolent machines in the Third Faction, and raised by them."

Sarah shivered; and Derek did the same thing, a child raised entirely by machines was not something either the soldier or the Connor matriarch wanted to imagine. Still, it was to this "Third Faction's" credit that they had not killed the little girl, and had successfully raised her to adulthood. And time travel was nothing new to Sarah's family. Heck, John was supposed to be around 25 now! "Ok. I don't understand all that, but go on."

David looked at the faces of the others in the room. John and Cameron were looking at him intently while saying nothing, and were obviously paying attention. Derek just looked bored. Despite his disgust at the idea of a person being raised by machines, the soldier probably didn't see how any of this story was relevant to David's mission. However, the hybrid felt he had to tell the rest of the story. Only when his tale was completed would his family understand why his mission was so important to him, and why he was completely driven to complete his objective, no matter the cost. "Thank you. As I said, that was the day I met my wife…."

"_And this is where your men are going to set our turrets up to make way for Savannah Weaver's unit to blaze the main compound after you have disabled Skynet's turrets and shock field's while my and Cameron's teams enters from the rear of the compound and First Lieutenant Weaver and Prime Intelligence John Henry's units provide tank and air support…are you listening, Lieutenant Connor!?" _

_David turned his attention back to his father, but he knew that right now, all that mattered was that he was his General, and demanded to be treated as such."Yes, General!" David replied, and he was glad his nature allowed him to conceal the extent of his embarrassment from the individuals in the room who were glaring at him with obvious disapproval. The General just nodded, knowing he had made his point, and continued describing the plan, and this time, David paid attention as he chastised himself. He had zoned out, and he NEVER zoned out. He couldn't help wondering what was wrong with him today, and why he hadn't been able to stop himself from staring at the red haired woman with blue eyes seated directly across from him. Not only had he been negligent in his duties to mind his CO, he had been rude as well, to one of his father's closest allies no less! That wasn't like him at all, and David resolved not to let it happen again. Cameron, seated next to John at the table, looked meaningfully at her son and smirked briefly before her usual stoic expression slid back into place, leaving David quite puzzled at her reaction to his misconduct. He had been raised by her his entire life, and he thought he was more like the cyborg than his father, in some ways, but there were still times he had no idea what his mother was thinking. After the meeting was over, David attempted to let the others exit before him, then quickly slink away to his unit and put this embarrassment behind him, but he was not that lucky._

_The "older" of the two red heads at the meeting waited till most of the others had left, then grabbed the hybrid's forearm in a vice grip before he could leave the room. "Where do you think you are going, young man? Do you even know what you are supposed to be doing?" _

_Only the fact that his father needed this ally on the field today kept him from replying. "That's Lieutenant Connor to you, Ma'am!" What came out instead was. "Of course." He then went on to briefly summarize the entire battle plan for the day, which he was glad he had memorized beforehand."Now let go of me!" _

_David attempted to push the Terminator off of him with both hands, but she maintained the grip on his arm and ignored the hybrid's efforts as he silently wished he had been allowed to bring his plasma rifle into the meeting room. The machine glared at David. "Good. I'm impressed that you were able to get so much from that briefing while staring at my daughter for 29.5 seconds. Let me be clear, she is not for you. You are not a suitable match for her, so you best keep your cognitions on the mission. Do you understand?!"_

"_Miss Weaver!" John Henry boomed loudly in his robotic voice while reentering the room. "You are endangering our alliance with the humans as we speak!" _

_Catherine let David's arm go. "What are you referring to, John Henry?" _

_But Cameron, who had been listening to Weaver's conversation with her son from the other room, answered for him as she walked in from the opposite doorway from John Henry. David's mother entered into the room with a purposeful gait that resembled the walking movements of most Terminators except for the longer strides which gave her movements a little extra fluidity, making her appear slightly more graceful than other machines, a trait that came from her years of experience teaching herself dancing. Cameron placed herself between Catherine and David. "He means that I will not allow you to threaten my offspring, First Lieutenant Catherine Weaver. He made a social error, and I'm sure he will apologize for his rudeness to Lieutenant Savannah Weaver. Lieutenant Connor?" _

"_Of course, First Lieutenant Connor." David replied with barely concealed tone of annoyance. He did not need his mother fighting his battles for him. Still he knew he did owe Savannah an apology. He just wasn't very good at giving them because he had never had to before, at least not for making a social blunder as big as this one. The woman in question had reentered the room to see what was keeping her "mother" and was now watching the scene play out in front of her with a studied look of disinterest. David had been around machines and their offspring long enough to know better. She was intrigued, although he would not venture to guess what about this confrontation had caught her interest. "I'm sorry, Lieutenant Weaver. I should not have…stared. I did not treat you with the proper respect I owed you as both an officer and a person." _

_The young woman just nodded and exited the room, followed by John Henry, but Catherine seemed to take that as a sign that her "daughter" had accepted the awkwardly stammered apology, and she started walking out as well, after David had already left in the opposite direction while quietly reminding his mother he could handle himself, leaving only the 2 female robots left in the room. Before the T-1001 could leave however, Cameron offered one final piece of "advice". "Don't make the mistake of thinking you are the only one in this room who is invested in her child, Miss Weaver. We all want what is optimal for our offspring, but that doesn't mean we have to threaten any individuals that have any probability of getting close to them. My son has been trained well, his behavior usually reflects this, and he would never bring harm you daughter. But if you harm him…" Cameron finished her sentence in the robotic, monotone inflection that the General still privately referred to his family members as his wife's "scary robot voice." In order to reinforce the threatening tone of her message:" I will use my plasma rifle to terminate you. Do you understand?" The liquid metal Terminator did not bother to point out that attempting such an action would damage the fragile alliance between humans and (some) machines, or that she had a more advanced physical design than Cameron which would give her an edge in any hypothetical battle that could occur between them. She had learned a mother's protective instinct all too well over the years, and knew it could not be swayed by reason at a time like this. So the liquid metal machine kept her doubts pertaining to Cameron's ability to carry out her threat to herself, nodded, and replied in an icy tone before exiting the room. "Understood."_

_Several hours later….._

"_This is General Connor speaking." David's com link crackled, although he and his men could barely hear it over the sound of the battle raging around him and the firing of his plasma rifle as he dropped yet another T-600 with a quick ZAP! to the chip in its head. "Lieutenant Connor, get your men and make a tactical retreat back to base camp! Lieutenant Savannah Weaver's unit can handle the rest of the diversionary assault on that compound from here, my forces are almost to that last hard drive and this blasted war will be over soon! I don't want to lose any more of my men than I have to on this last battlefield. We've done enough dying!" _

_David's unit cheered when hearing the news, and began to move out, but David held up his hand, and everyone stopped. David was thinking and he knew he had to do it fast. John Connor had just given him an order, and son or not, he had to follow it. On the other hand, he knew Savannah's unit would be exposed if his unit simply discontinued covering them with their turrets and left. They would distract Skynet long enough for his father's assault group to prevail, but they would have heavy casualties, and Savannah would probably be one of them. As usual, David understood his father's rationale for giving an order. In this case, the General did not want to unnecessarily risk any of his men to protect a unit (mostly) composed of machines. However, for the first time, the hybrid did not agree with his father's order. Savannah Weaver was a tactical genius, and apparently, a great soldier who acted much like the machines that had raised her, but David's trained eyes could tell the woman was also 100% human, and therefore, more vulnerable to injury than her unit of reprogrammed T-600's and Infiltrators. But there was no time for questioning orders in the heat of battle. Interpreting them, on the other hand… David sighed; this would NOT give him any popularity points with his men. "Hold it! The General ordered us to make a tactical retreat, not turn tail and run with our tails between our legs! We are going to do this right, and that means we pack up ALL of our equipment first, and then move out from the turrets one firing team at a time, starting at the one furthest away from the compound, and working our way inward! In the mean time, we continue to provide cover fire for Lieutenant Weaver's forces. I will help supervise the turret closest to the fighting until everyone else has moved out. Now get to it!" David's men groaned, but did as they were told, packing up their equipment and moving out from their turrets one group at a time. David's turret was closest to the fighting, he almost got hit by retaliatory strikes from Skynet forces several times, and his firing team had to help rebuff several T-600s and a triple eight. However, miraculously, while David's unit had sustained heavy casualties taking their currently strong position from Skynet, neither David, nor any of his men, were killed during the retreat away from Skynet's final fortress . When the other firing teams were clear of danger, David and his firing team finally packed his equipment and moved out, while the hybrid noted to his satisfaction that Savannah's unit had sustained minimal loses, and the red haired beauty was among those still functional. He was even more relieved when he noticed HK's crashing down from the sky and Skynet ground forces shutting down all around him as he ran. _

_A few moments later, his father confirmed his suspicions with his announcement on all Resistance channels. "This is John Connor! Skynet is offline! I repeat! Skynet is offline! We finally won! I would like to personally congratulate each and every one of you…" But David barely heard the rest. Although he was happy the war was over, and appeared absolutely calm as he greeted his unit back at base camp, he was in shock. The war that had raged since long before he had been born, the one he had spent his entire life preparing for and fighting, was over. What was he supposed to do now?_

David smiled. "After that came the debriefing. Future John was more than a little upset that I had not ordered my men to make a hastier retreat from our firing positions, but since none of us had died, and he was too happy after our great victory to be really upset, I was not actually punished, and my mother briefly wore that knowing smirk on her face again. It was kind of freaking me out actually." Derek chuckled; he knew the feeling, the Metal creeped him out all the time. At this point in the telling of his story, David was the one wearing a smirk. "After that, something surprising happened. Catherine Weaver had heard that I had ordered my unit to provide cover for her daughter longer than we had been ordered too, and she came to me with Savannah to personally thank me for saving her daughter. She did so with obvious reluctance, as her speech was monotone, and her movements even more mechanical than before, and I knew she was probably only thanking me for Savannah's benefit. But I still shook her hand and accepted the T-1001's thanks anyway. As the "mother/daughter" pair left the room, I couldn't help but notice when Savannah shot me a glance with her blue eyes that was just a couple seconds too long for politeness. After that, I personally took every messenger or repair assignment I could that would let me get close to her and engage the red haired woman in conversation while I worked. One thing led to another, and we ended up getting married a year later." That last part was a good ending to the story of his courtship with his wife, and he could see from the slight smile on Sarah's face that she liked hearing it. But it wasn't what had really happened. Not at all…

_The festivities were continuing well into their third night now, as Human Resistance fighters danced, drank, shouted, and partook in numerous other acts of revelry. But David was not among the partiers. Naturally, he had shared a few drinks with his men on the night of their victory over Skynet, as he was expected to do, but despite the excitement he shared with them over the victory, he was not overly fond of their company, and he knew the feeling was mutual. David had been picked to be their leader due to his technical aptitude and ability to think clearly in battle, not due to any charisma or popularity on his part. In fact, half the men under his command resented him, either for being the spawn of a Terminator, or because of their belief that being John Connor's son had won David a position of leadership that should have been given to someone more qualified. His men had come to respect his knowledge and ability to lead them well in battle, but they thought he was too cold and calculating when he made decisions, and that he was not an easy person to get along with. As a consequence, they did not like him very much, so David had retired to his quarters early that first night and allowed his men to enjoy their hard earned R &R. David also realized that, due to his "hybrid" status, many of the other people who were currently celebrating in the common areas and mess hall of the bunker did not like him either, although few of them would have the guts to say so, so David had not rejoined the festivities since then, and he had buried himself in books and various technical projects while everyone else celebrated, only leaving his room to get his meals from the kitchen. He had briefly spoken to Serena, his sister, but she had been busy celebrating with her husband, Ben, and looking after their only child, Timothy, to speak to David for very long. He understood. In fact, he was happy for his little sister. That didn't make him feel any less alone right now, though. The truth was he had no one else to spend time with. David knew that his mother and father were probably still hammering out the details of how resources would be divided between the humans and Third Faction in negotiations with John Henry and other machine representatives, and that they would probably want to spend what little down time they had between negotiating sessions alone together in their room, sleeping and partaking in other activities the hybrid didn't want to think about. Eric and Clayton were dead. His younger brothers, whom he had used to play "Terminators versus Resistance fighters" with in abandoned tunnels just outside of the bunker when they were all children, had died fighting Skynet in their own unit after receiving numerous commendations for valor and clear thinking in the line of combat, and David could not help but feel sad they had not lived to see the A.I. finally be put down for good._

_And so it had come to pass that David was sitting quietly in his quarters, fixing a damaged Third Faction T-600 that had been dragged off the battlefield as a trophy by one of his men. David didn't know whether the Private didn't know it had belonged to the Resistance's allies, or didn't care, but he thought it would be a bad idea to let his men deface the unit, or even burn it in thermite, so the hybrid had confiscated it from the soldier showing off his "trophy" in the mess hall, and taken it back here. Truthfully, David was glad for the distraction, and he was more than happy to mentally shut out the noise of the party coming from outside his dwelling and focus on slowly fixing the machine with the few tools he had available in his dwelling . Despite all the misery machines had brought upon the world in recent decades, David often felt more comfortable around them (the ones that weren't trying to kill or threaten him, anyway) than around humans. He guessed that it was just his nature not to get along with people, and he had better get used to it…_

_The hybrid heard a knock on the door to his domicile. "Excuse me? May I come in?" David's eyes quickly raced to the bulletproof window in the door of his dwelling. The Hybrid had been so wrapped up in his own thoughts; he hadn't even noticed Savannah Weaver had been quietly standing outside his door for several minutes, waiting for him to give her permission to enter. David stood up and quickly opened the door, noticing after several awkward seconds that the woman was now casually glancing all over his room and not relaying a message of any kind just yet. He decided to break the silence. "I should have let you in sooner but I wasn't paying attention. Sorry! Is there something official you need from me, Lieutenant Weaver? If not, I'm not sure I'll be good company right now." _

"_I'll be the judge of that." The woman's blue eyes wandered all over David's dwelling once more, making note of every detail of the room. She noticed that, although it was smaller than her own living space at Third Faction HQ, David used his space more efficiently than she did (an understatement if there ever was one, as Savannah had numerous paintings and drawings she had made herself scattered all over her room), and judging from the nearly repaired T-600 lying on his table that she heard had looked like scrap metal just this morning, he was good at fixing things as well. The various books on science and technology which were neatly stacked in several piles in one corner of the youngest Connor's room also indicated the dwelling occupant was well educated._

_David scratched the back of his head nervously and repeated his query. "Is there something you wanted to see me about, Lieutenant Weaver?" _

_The woman's blue eyes met the David's green ones. "Please, call me Savannah. May I call you David?" _

_David raised one of his eyebrows in surprise at the young woman's lack of formality, but eventually nodded. "Yes. Of course. Would you like a drink, or?" _

_The red haired woman laughed for the first time since David had seen her, and the unusual emotional display from Savannah caught him of guard with its beauty, as the hybrid mentally noted that it sounded like music to his ears."If I had wanted to drink, I could have joined the party outside, although your comrades probably wouldn't enjoy my company. Most of them probably couldn't even tell I'm not a machine!" _

_Now it was David's turn to laugh. "Yeah, they can be pretty dense about telling the difference between humans and Terminators sometimes. If it makes, you feel better, most of them aren't comfortable around me, either. You see I'm a…" _

"_Hybrid." Savannah finished for him. "The result of a mixture of human and cybernetic organism genetic material. The General, your father, allowed me to read your file after the briefing, I wanted to know I could rely on the person assigned to shield my unit from harm. I hope you don't mind." David just shrugged as Savannah continued. "It appears that, like me, you do not feel welcomed by the group you were raised with." David wondered why the woman in front of him was volunteering this information, but he was intrigued. It had never occurred to him how hard it must have been for Savannah to have been raised by machines. Even he had been blessed with one human parent to help him sort out the more human parts of his personality, but it looked like Savannah hadn't had human parents for a long time. "The T-1001 who took my mother's name raised me as best she could, and has even grown to love me in her own way, although she had never said so directly. Even so, it took me years to accept her as my adoptive mother after I found out what she was. This was partly because, as hard as she tries, she can never understand what it is like to be human, and she often doesn't comprehend what I am going through, or what I'm thinking. Most of the other machines, other than my friend, John Henry, don't even bother to try and understand me, and view me as nothing more than a nuisance to be put up with. If it weren't for my ability to think creatively, even in combat situations, they probably wouldn't even show me enough consideration to allow me to engage them in polite conversation." _

_David nodded sympathetically, and quickly decided he should repay Savannah's personal disclosure to him with some information of his own. " I think I can partially understand where you are coming from. You know, my parents raised me well enough, and I love them, but they are often busy. Besides them and my sister Serena, I'm pretty much alone too." David figured that if this woman had read his file, she would know who Serena was, at least on paper._

_Savannah closed the door to David's quarters. "You don't have to be. Not anymore." _

"_What …do you mean?" David replied nervously. The hybrid did not like having the only exit from his dwelling cut off from him, even by an ally. 'Where is this going?' He wondered. _

_The red haired woman's reply was simple and to the point. "I mean that I am currently reaching the end of my peak of sexual development, and I have been looking for a suitable life mate for several years now. As I am almost ignored by most of the machines in my faction, none of the Infiltrator models interest me in the slightest. Similarly, from what I have seen, I find most of the men I have seen in your faction to be prejudiced, and in many causes, quite simple in their thinking. No offense." _

"_None taken, but…" _

_Savannah plowed on. "You, on the other hand, I find quite intriguing. Your behavioral lapse during the briefing suggests that you are capable of experiencing human emotions most machines cannot, such as infatuation and lust. Thank you for your apology for that, by the way." David was so taken aback by Savannah's frank speech, he forgot to regulate his emotions, and quickly found himself blushing a deep red. "Your blushing confirms my conclusions. Furthermore, your actions on the battlefield suggest that you already care about my well being, and a quick analysis of your words, actions, and dwelling all indicate that you are a man with great intelligence and organizational skills. Also, your impressive genetic line and apparent fitness level seem to corroborate my conclusion that you are the only logical choice." _

_David shook his head in disbelief, before sighing, then replying to the beautiful, but apparently off-kilter woman in front of him. "Savannah, there are lots of men here you haven't met yet, and a few of them are actually kind of decent. If you were more thorough in your search, you might find yourself more interested in one of them. Besides, you are just analyzing this like a machine, which is understandable, considering who you were raised by. I don't know much about love, but I know there is more to it than just logic and utility. You need to search your feelings as well if you want to find the right person for you. And it may take you months, maybe even years to…" _

_Savannah shook her head, indicating she emphatically disagreed with David. "No! I want you!" The blue eyed woman's voice volume rose to a volume that was almost, but not quiet, yelling now, and the hybrid could tell he had misjudged the nature of her analysis as she visibly calmed herself down, blushed in embarrassment for her lack of restraint during her outburst, and resumed speaking."I…also find you very visually pleasing and…" David could tell this was hard for the usually reserved woman, who probably had little opportunity to communicating her emotions with someone that could understand them in the last few decades, so he let her take her time. "I find myself liking being around you. For the last three days, I keep finding myself thinking about you. And when you looked at me like you did in that briefing room, it scared me, but…in a good way, if that makes any sense." _

_Savannah looked away from David. The hybrid could tell the woman in front of him was not experienced at communicating what she was feeling, and it was probably taking a great deal of effort on the ginger haired woman's part just to continue this conversation. That being the cause, David knew it would be best to take the woman's words seriously and her statements at face value. David nodded, and noted to himself that his mouth was starting to get a little dry and his stomach felt like it was doing back flips inside him."Believe me, that makes perfect sense. I've been having a lot of those feelings about you as well, but I don't want to rush into anything. As I said, I am not all that familiar with courtship rituals, but I know these things usually take time." _

_Savannah nodded in understanding and resumed looking David in the eye with a serious expression on her face. "I understand, but we only have till the end of the week before negotiations between our two factions are over. After that, I will have to decide to go back to the Third Faction or remain here. If I leave, I have no way of knowing when, or if, I will ever be able to come back here. And I am the only organic life form allowed in my faction's HQ." _

_David sighed. He didn't like having such a short time to make such an important decision, but he had a strong feeling that this strange, blue eyed woman was right for him; since he had never had strong feelings of this nature for another person in all 20 of his years. He just wanted to make sure she felt the same way. "Fine. Since I have no other obligations at this time, I will spend as much of my time with you over the next week as you will allow. If we both still think I'm the right person for you at the end of that time, I will accept you as my life mate, on the condition that you agree to marry me. Call me old fashioned, but even my unconventional parents eventually got married to formalize their union, and I just wouldn't feel right spending the rest of my life with someone without marrying them. So if you really want me as your life mate…" _

"_That would be fine. In fact," Savannah smiled. "I think I would like that. It would certainly make our commitment to the relationship more public, and my adoptive mother would also be less likely to take your head off out of a false impression that you were taking advantage of me. She's a bit overprotective." _

_David just managed to stop himself from gulping. This whole situation was making him more uncomfortable by the second. Even so, David had a strong feeling he would regret it if he let Savannah slip away from him now. But David could still try to be reasonably cautious while making such an important decision. "Yes. I gathered as much. Anyway, we have till the end of the week."_

_But Savannah was already taking off her clothes, and she was soon standing in front of David with only her undergarments on. David stood in shocked silence with his mouth wide open before the woman pushed him onto the bed in the corner of his domicile. "And I'm going to show you why we won't need that long to make this decision. Unless you want me to leave?" Savannah put on the most innocent face she could produce at the moment (which was simultaneously awkward and, from David's point of view, endearing) and the hybrid shook his head slowly._

…

_The wedding occurred only three days later. It was a small ceremony, with only Cameron, both (K) Catherines (Weaver and Brewster), John Henry, and Serena's family in attendance, but John Connor had carved time out of his busy schedule to preside over the event. In the absence of any father figure in Savannah's life (James Ellison had died years ago, and John Henry was more like a good friend) Catherine Weaver led her "daughter" up to the altar, and quickly whispered into David's ear before the ceremony when Savannah wasn't looking. "My daughter seems to be emotionally invested in you for some reason, so I will allow this, but if you damage her in any way, I will terminate you myself. Understood?" _

_David nodded and whispered back. "Sounds fair." The rest of the ceremony went off without a hitch, as David and his new bride exchanged rings (just two more pieces of formerly expensive rubble that had been found in the ruins of L.A. after J-day) and vows , and John Connor pronounced them husband and wife. As David carried his new bride toward the front of the small chapel, before taking her via jeep to the recently cleaned honeymoon suite in one of the few hotels just outside of L.A that had survived J-day and was still structurally sound (The Resistance and Third Faction had started using their resources to provide some buildings in the area with water and power again) Cameron whispered to her son before he could leave the building. "I could tell that you really liked this one!"_

David sighed. The happy part of his story was almost over, and he knew that he would have to tell his family everything if he wanted them to understand why he had chosen to come back to this time. He would have to tell them about Black Wednesday.

**I hope you liked this chapter. I want to thank all my readers for their constant support and feedback, especially for their encouragement to continue with this story format after my last chapter! I hope you liked my take on adult Savannah. I thought it would be interesting to see how a person who was not quiet human, but was raised by one, would interact with a pure human who had been raised almost entirely by machines. Anyway, please let me know what you think of my story so far, your input is always appreciated!**


	10. Chapter 9

**A warning for some of my more sensitive readers: Multiple character and child deaths contained in this chapter!**

"Well, as interesting as your love life is to all of us here…" Derek's voice was dripping with sarcasm. "Can you please get to the part of the story that brings you here? Sometime today...Ouf!" David's great-uncle cried out in pain as his grandmother hit him in the ribs. Hard.

Smirking, David continued. "Sure, Derek. I'm getting to that part. I just thought you might like some context first before…" David's face suddenly took on a stoic appearance again, and all traces of amusement and arrogance seemed to vanish from John's son. "I tell you about Black Wednesday." Everyone in the Connor household became silent and stared at the young man from the future, waiting for him to finish his story. "As you can imagine, things didn't go back to what you…" David vaguely pointed toward John and Sarah Connor. "would consider normal just because Skynet had been defeated. The world was still in ruins, the air was cold, the ground covered in radiation in many places, and resources were scarce. Even though humanity had allied themselves with the Third Faction, humanity and machines had almost come to blows again several times after Skynet's defeat over how these limited resources would be divided and used. It was only after humans agreed to limit themselves to 2 children per couple (and all couples who were able were encouraged to have this many offspring to stabilize the human population), and the machines agreed to cease production of new A.I's for the foreseeable future, that anything close to a stable peace could be reached between our two factions. This peace was guarded by the council of 12, which consisted of persons chosen to represent the humans and free machines. Naturally, this council included great leaders from both, including John Connor, John Henry and Catherine Weaver. It was only after this council was first convened 2 years after Skynet's defeat that a lingering problem could be addressed: the remaining Skynet Infiltrator units. As you know, Infiltrator units, or Terminators, are designed in such a way that they can remain functional for long periods of time without Skynet's guidance. Most of these units shut themselves down right after Skynet was defeated. The council believed that this was because they considered all of their missions either pointless, or irreversible failures after their master was destroyed. Most of the remaining functional Infiltrator units understood they had failed, and slowly began to realize that Skynet's plan to destroy all who opposed it had been a faulty one. However, they still wanted to make an existence for themselves, and so they sought a new purpose for their existence. They found their new purpose under the tutelage of the members of the Third Faction, who welcomed their contrite brethren with metallic arms." Derek let out a grunt of disapproval at the news that this group of infiltrators had been absolved so easily, but the others ignored him as David continued speaking. "The problem was that a very small group of Terminators that had not shut down were still loyal to Skynet, and continued to undermine all the council's efforts to rebuild the Earth. Whether they did this out of hatred for humanity and the Third Faction, or the deluded belief that they could still destroy us, no one was able to determine. The one thing they all had in common was that they were leaving a lot of senseless destruction in their wake while hindering all efforts to bring the world back to its feet."

Cameron interrupted in her trademark robotic tone, which worried David. She had been carrying on her "emotionless" mode almost since she and John had been caught…he believed the term used in this decade was "making out". She was only making things worse for herself than they had to be during this time of transition, but it was not the time to address that yet. "So, there are still hostile Infiltrators in the time you come from? Is there any chance one of them could have followed you to this time?"

David shook his head emphatically. "No. All the hostile Infiltrators had been terminated by the time I left. We made damn sure of that. " David's voice rose several octaves, but he barely noticed. "All those metal bastards are terminated now and not a moment too soon!"

The others looked on in shocked (except in Cameron's case) silence at their relative's sudden outburst of emotion. The worried looks on their faces indicated that both John and Sarah Connor were concerned about David's emotional well being, but it was the Connor matriarch who spoke. "Are you alright, David? If you need to take a break and tell the rest of the story later, that would be alright."

David took a deep breath, and then shook his head emphatically. "No. I'll be okay. I need to tell you this now. It's important. I need to tell you why I'm here. I need you to understand." Then David slipped back into the emotionless, robotic mode he had needed to employ far too often over the years, and his face took on a completely blank expression. Mercifully, no one tried to interrupt him at this point. David knew that there would be hell to pay later, that all of his fury and sadness would return with a vengeance when he allowed himself to experience emotions again, but he needed to be calm to communicate the reason for his mission with any kind of coherency at this moment. David's voice was pure monotone. "It happened five years after Victory day, or V-day. The world was still in ruins, but it was slowly being rebuilt under the guidance of the council. By that point, Savannah and I already had two children: twin boys we named Eric and Clayton, after my fallen brothers. In my eyes, the world was as good as it had ever been. I had a beautiful wife, two strong, healthy children, and, with my mechanical skills giving me steady work from humans and machines alike, I had the means to provide for them. I finally felt like I belonged somewhere, that I was safe."

"No one is ever safe." Sarah automatically whispered without thinking. David nodded towards his grandmother.

"Indeed. My John had tried to teach me that very lesson before. I'm ashamed to say it was a hard lesson for me to learn, and the price for my slow learning curve was high. But you see, we had been told by that point that all Skynet threats had been neutralized. That all the hostile Infiltrators were terminated. We were told wrong. One remained. He had named himself Quezzal."

_There was no work to be done today for David Connor. There were no damaged Infiltrator units to fix, no jeep motors to work on, heck, there weren't even any guns that needed cleaning. Thankfully, this was a rare occurrence for David, who had set up his mechanic shop just outside of San Francisco. In fact, being the owner of what many considered to be the best body and machine shop on the West Coast sometimes kept him and his workers busy almost 10 hours some days. But today was a holiday. In fact, it was the only holiday observed by every member of both the human and machine factions: V-day. This was, in fact, the fifth anniversary of Skynet's final defeat at the heart of L.A. Today, nobody, not even the council members, were working. Naturally, David made use of this rare moment of freedom as most fathers would, by spending it with his family. Rising early that morning to the sight of Eric and Clayton jumping at the foot of his and Savannah's bed, David let out a groan, remembered what day it was, and slowly began to get out of bed while a smile formed on his face even as his children screamed in unison."Daddy, you need to take us to the park like you promised so we can go see grandpa and grandma!" _

_David raised a finger to his lips comically. "Ok, but you need to be quiet now and let me get ready, or you'll wake the dragon!" _

_The two boys, with their matching red hair and green eyes, quickly quieted down as the excitement in their eyes turned to fear and remembrance. David couldn't help but laugh softly as his sons ran out of the room in fear of their mother, who was infamous for her foul moods when she was awakened early in the morning. These moods in Savannah were often paired with an increased gruffness in her speech, lack of patience, and a tendency to be overly critical. It was during one of these moments that Eric had started referring to his mother as "the dragon", a nickname which had stuck within their family and annoyed the hybrid's wife to no end. David quietly cleaned himself up and got changed, hoping to avoid awakening his beautiful wife who had such an unpleasant temperament in the morning. His luck was not that good today. "Were do you think you're going?!" Savannah spoke in an obviously irritated tone while taking the covers off herself. "You were a perfectly good pillow, and you had to ruin it by getting up!" _

_David laughed at his wife's pouting, which earned him a scowl from the redhead, causing him to become serious again. "Sorry, baby, but I promised to take the boys to the dedication of the new park to enjoy the V-day festivities, remember? Besides, my mom and dad are going to be there this afternoon to show their support for the first new park built since J-day, and I wanted our kids to see their grandparents. We've been planning this for weeks." _

_Still groggy from waking up, Savannah nodded. "I remember. I just wish my adoptive mother could be there as well. It's too bad she's still pinned down in negotiations with the machines on the East Coast concerning resource distribution with the west. I guess it makes sense though. Of all the A.I.'s left in the world, only your mother actually thought the park opening was important enough to merit an attendance." David just nodded and thought to himself. 'Yes. I'm glad our kids will be able to see my parents today.' Then he threw in a sarcastic thought for good measure. 'It is such a tragedy that your overly critical liquid "mom" couldn't be there.' The hybrid, wisely, didn't voice this last thought, and smiled as his wife continued talking. "Do we really have to get up so early though? I was having a really good dream." _

"_Honey, it's a quarter past 8, and the park is going to be packed with humans from all over the continent! Besides, I was going to let you sleep in and meet us later." _

_Savannah nodded again, letting her head return to the pillow. "Ok, don't forget to make the kid's some breakfast before you go and…" _

"_Make sure they eat their protein squares. I remember." David interrupted her. "I've got it covered." This time, there was no response other than his wife's soft snores. David smiled once more, placing a kiss on his wife's forehead before he left the room. _

_Several hours later..._

_ After the opening ceremonies were completed, David took his sons to a mostly isolated section of the park to play on the monkey bars that had just been installed there several weeks ago. Whenever David thought of his own childhood during the war: constantly being prepared for combat, avoiding or fighting machine bigots in the tunnel, and never being allowed topside except to go on missions he may never come back from, he swore to himself that his children would have better early years than he had. This had been a more difficult task than he anticipated, however, as many parents of other children considered Eric and Clayton to be freaks. These people would often show obvious signs of discomfort around the twins, sometimes going as far as forbidding their own children to play with the 2 boys simply because they were the offspring of a hybrid and a child adopted by the Third Faction. Despite the general unfairness of this whole situation, however, Eric and Clayton seemed to be developing fine so far, and were currently playing near a couple dozen children of some of the more tolerant parents in the area. David was so caught up in the sight of his boys playing on the metal structure that he barely noticed the hooded figure with the long, black hair and short beard walking quickly by him in midst of a crowd of people, towards the middle of the park. The hairs on the back of David's neck stood up on end, and a chill passed through him. 'Was that…Joshua Rider?" David quickly turned his head around to look at the unidentified individual who resembled the last of the Grays that had betrayed humanity and the only one to have taken that dishonor upon himself after the first group of Grays had been hunted down and killed. But the man had vanished into the crowd, a man whom David had only seen once in person through the lenses of binoculars that the hybrid had used to look behind enemy lines during a particularly fierce battle his unit and Skynet's forces…if he had ever been there at all. David shook his head. 'Get a grip on yourself, David. You're just having flashbacks from the war again. Joshua died with Skynet on V-dad in the explosion that blew up the main compound. Even if they didn't find the body, no one could have survived that…' A moment later, Eric fell off the monkey bars and started crying, and David's concerns about the last Gray were pushed to the back of his mind as he raced over to check his son for injuries. Several minutes later, his wife arrived as the father was bandaging his injured son's bruised knee ( he always carried a first aid kit these days for just such an occasion) while trying to keep Clayton calm. _

_Savanna rushed over to the park bench when she saw the bandage, but her tone of voice was calm. "What happened? Is Eric ok?" _

_David nodded calmly."He'll be fine. He just bruised his knee is all. I guess I should have helped him get a better grip on those monkey bars, not that I would know how to use them from personal experience." _

_To her credit, Savannah did not "flip out" on David or blame him for what had happened. Instead, the mother of two nodded in calm acceptance of the situation and took Eric in her arms while her husband started to play a game with Clayton to keep his mind off his brother's mild injury "Are your parents here for the celebration yet?" _

_David shook his head. "Some matter of business held them up, and my dad sent a message saying they would be running a little behind, while promising they would be here later to see the boys. He and my mom could be here any minute."_

_ It started happening around them before Savannah could ask any more questions. An event so terrible, that David would never be able to forget it, even if he lived to be 1,000. The worst part was that it started with the children. All of the children. The first five David saw suddenly fell off the monkey bars and lay still on the ground. While the children's parents were rushing to their aid, David noticed all the other children in his vicinity start collapsing as well, with Eric and Clayton the last to fall in the arms of Savannah and himself. For the very first time in his life, David found himself panicking, first speaking to, then shouting at, and finally shaking his children to elicit a response from their suddenly still little bodies. None was forthcoming, and as David finally began to look around, he noticed that none of the other parents were having any more success with their own offspring. There had been screaming since the first children had started falling down (David later learned it had started near the center of the park), but one scream rose above all of the others in David's eardrums: an almost unearthly wail that conveyed a depth of misery and despair that defied categorization. It came as no surprise to him when the hybrid realized that the scream had come from his own lips. The adults started exhibiting the same symptoms soon afterward, with Savannah's body collapsing onto Eric's almost simultaneously with that of most of the others adults in the vicinity. David became hysterical as his eyes filled with tears and he continued to shake all three of his family members in a vain hope they would wake up. He was so preoccupied with this task he did not notice that almost every other person in the park had already succumbed to the inevitable. He was the last one standing, or so it appeared, when David started feeling lightheaded. It took several more minutes for the vertigo to set in, causing David's legs to collapse beneath him as he fell to the ground next to his wife and two sons. _

_That was when he heard__** them**__. "What do you think?!" A voice filled with desperation and fear came from behind a tree, and David looked up as two figures emerged from behind the large tree, surveying the carnage in from of them. "Did I do well,_ Quezzal_? Did the experimental bio-weapon I placed have the desired effect? Can we get the hell out of here now and get back to our safe haven in Alaska!? I did the job, now we need to leave before anyone can pin this on us…" _

_But the other man lifted the first one by the neck with one arm, interrupting the flow of oxygen to his lungs and silencing him most effectively. "You can leave when I tell you to leave. The General was not here. He must pay for what he has done to my creator, and it would only be just that his death would come to him on the anniversary of his greatest triumph. We are not leaving until we find John Connor and kill him to avenge Skynet." David's eyes narrowed from his place on the ground as his body trembled with rage. At this point , David knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the first figure was, indeed, Joshua Rider, although he was standing in the middle of the park without any obvious protection from whatever he had triggered that caused the disaster around him, causing David to deduce that the rumors were true. Skynet had given the last Gray cybernetic upgrades near the end of the war. 'He must have used those to survive the final battle of the war, and whatever this mess is. But he will NOT survive me!' David further noted that the second individual who was currently letting go of Joshua's neck, causing him to fall to the ground gasping for air, was obviously a hostile Infiltrator unit. Neither of these individuals was supposed to exist anymore, yet here they were, causing unimaginable havoc. As Rider rose to his feet, nodding toward the infiltrator in an act of submission, David noticed that neither of the two were looking in his direction, or paying him any mind whatsoever. 'They don't know I'm here and still alive. Good. That will make it easier for me to kill that traitorous bastard!' Fighting his trembling hands, David pulled out the specialized, high powered handgun that he had made for himself and constantly wore in his coat and slowly pulled back the safety before carefully aiming it at Rider's head. He took his time, since the traitor did not know where David was located, and did not appear to be going anywhere as he continued talking to the Terminator. It took a while to line up a good shot, between the tears in David's eyes and the vertigo he was still experiencing, John Connor's son knew he would be hard pressed to even pull off one shot with perfect accuracy. But he also knew one shot may be all he would get before the Infiltrator killed him in retaliation, so he was determined to make every bullet count. And he did. The first shot soon rang out, breaking both the park's eerie silence and the front of Rider's skull. Even so, David did not know how much it would take to kill a cybernitically enhanced human, so he fired every bullet in his customized handgun into Joshua's head, neck, and torso, causing the latter party to drop to the ground DOA, with his head, neck, and a large part of his torso completely severed from the rest of his body. It was the first time David had ever killed a human being. The infiltrator that had accompanied the traitor was now running towards him at full speed, and David knew he was done for. Even if he was in top physical shape at the moment and he still had all the bullets in his gun, David Connor had no chance against the infiltrator without heavier weaponry. David braced himself for the end as the machine came barraging toward him wordlessly. But it never came, for the hybrid was, once again, not that lucky. David saw the two unmistakable blue beams cut into the infiltrator's torso, where its power cells had been located, and heard the telltale zaps of a plasma rifle. After that, everything in David's world went black._

David turned solemnly toward the others in the room, who (except for Cameron) looked absolutely shocked at the events their relative had just described, but they did not dare speak after this point in the story, for they knew not what to say. How was one supposed to respond to someone who had just told you they had lost their spouse and children? After almost a minute of silence, the hybrid continued in the same monotone voice. "Now you know why I'm here, and what I'm trying to prevent. The only other details that matter are these. It was Cameron who saved me, first with the plasma rifle, then with a new cybernetic transplant procedure, which only worked on hybrids or genetically modified humans, that the Third Faction invented on the spot using what they learned from Joshua's corpse and the Infiltrator's CPU. With the help of futuristic medical technology, my hybrid body survived a month before this procedure could be invented and two more months of numerous painful surgeries (which I had mercifully been unconscious foras a side effect of the bio-weapon that had brought me to the edge of death). It took another month more for my body and mind to become integrated enough with my new parts to allow me to regain consciousness. At this point, I was told that my mother had sacrificed herself to save me, donating most of her components, including her entire endoskeleton and many of her biological materials, as well as her CPU (which was needed to help my body continue its automatic functions after the extensive neural and brain damage I had suffered) and power cell for this purpose, although the design of her endoskeleton had to be somewhat modified and have more coltan added to it to fit my frame. I later learned that Serena had also been at the park opening. Thankfully, her family had not made it to the park before the entire area had already been quarantined. Doctors had tried to save my sister with the same transplant procedure they used on me, using her 888 father as a donor, but she had not survived the operations, since, being closer to the center of the park, she had been more damaged than me to begin with. Everyone I loved, except my father, who could barely look at me after what my mother had done to save me, was dead. The only thing my John and I had in common now was our obsession: trying to get the council to authorize another trip back in time to stop J-day, and, in effect, Black Wednesday, if not in our timeline, than in another. But due the enormous expense and power demands of time travel, and the fact that the mission would not change my timeline, only create a new one, it took years before the Council gave into the tremendous public pressure put on them by humans and machines alike to create a better timeline were billions of people wouldn't die, the earth wouldn't be in ruins, and no resources would be lost in a war between humans and machines. Finally, our request was granted, thanks in large part to John Connor, John Henry, and Catherine Weaver. My John had already died by then, but the council carried out his and Catherine Weaver's wishes to let me be the one to carry out the mission, despite the fact that there were numerous other volunteers who wanted to go instead. My mission is to stop J-day so that neither that catastrophe, nor Black Wednesday, will ever happen in this timeline. I have secured Catherine Weaver's help in this regard in your present, and I have given her information that should allow her to help us stop J-day, but it will take a few days for her to get back to us. And finally, I will give you more information as it becomes necessary for me to do so. Now, if you don't mind, I would like to be alone for a little while."

David quickly walked out of the room, ignoring the concerned looks his relatives were giving him (even Derek could respect that his grandnephew obviously needed some space right now, and that it was not the best time to try to get more answers out of the hybrid), while doing his best to stay calm and attempting to keep the others from seeing the moment his emotional walls broke. As he slammed the door while entering the Connors' garage, he noted that he may not have done such a great job at that. It didn't matter; he had to get away for this. As the hybrid softly began crying while seated on the floor, he heard the door from the house to the garage open again, and found he could not hide the irritation in his voice. "I said I wanted to be left alone!"

"I don't think it's a great idea for you to be alone now, David." The hybrid turned his head around, and the surprise was showing in his eyes as he looked at the garage's newest occupant. It was the last person he thought would want to talk with him right now…

**Hello again, readers! I hope you are all still liking my story, even after it took such a dark turn because of Black Wednesday. I know this chapter was a major downer, but the events that David recalls here are an important part of the plot, and changing them is David's primary motivation throughout the story. As such, this tale needed to be told to advance the plot, not to increase shock value. Fear not, (most of) the next chapter will have a lighter tone, and there will definitely be more Jameron in the next few chapters. Thanks again to all of my readers, especially those who have chosen to follow, favorite, or review Divergence! As always, your input is appreciated!**


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